


To the Stars

by AFTanith



Series: To the Stars [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, F/M, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Season/Series 01, Slow Burn, Various Canonical Relationships & One-Night Stands, Various Relationships & One-Night Stands ft. Original Female Character(s)/Canon Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 18:48:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18762283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AFTanith/pseuds/AFTanith
Summary: Paranormal Investigator Alexandra Crowe does not work with hunters. She has no use for them, thank you very much. They're headstrong and arrogant and far too often careless, and Alex just doesn't want that kind of "help" on a case.At least, that's what she thinks until she gets to Jericho. There she meets Sam and Dean, two bizarrely model-attractive hunters that prove surprisingly tolerable, all things considered. They're unexpectedly competent, moderately personable, and pretty damn easy on the eyes.So she works with them. What's the harm? It's not like she's ever going to see them again.Right?





	1. Highway to Hell

**Author's Note:**

> I. _To the Stars_ is going to be a series of fourteen stories of approximately twenty-two chapters each, with room for potential AUs and spinoffs in the (distant) future.
> 
> II. Most chapters of the early installments of this series will correspond in some capacity with canonical episodes; most chapters of this installment in particular will correspond with season one episodes. As such, most chapters will include some lines of dialogue written by the actual _Supernatural_ writers.
> 
> III. This first installment of the series will be the most closely tied to canon; hopefully, it will still be interesting in spite of that! If not, you might want to check back in for the sequel story; that will branch further away from canon and may be a more satisfying read.
> 
> IV. I am a devotee of the Kripke era of _Supernatural_. If your preferred era of the show takes place during any season(s) other than one through five, this probably isn't going to be the fic/series for you. I will not be treating anything post- _Swan Song_ as canon, for better or for worse. We're Kripke or bust here, folks. *shrug*
> 
> V. No _Supernatural_ fan needs to be told how important music is to the atmosphere of the story. To this point, each chapter of the _To the Stars_ series corresponds to a classic rock song (or, in much later chapters/installments, modern rock songs). You can listen to the playlist for this series [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2NDrboDVg8ZkZ3r1130UqJ?si=1IlXaQYAQjCm0LjPq5z_8w) at Spotify. (There is an additional playlist for later installments of the series, but that's still a work in progress. You can find it if you dig, but there's bigger risk of running across potential spoilers. Mostly, these spoilers will be tonal in nature, but astute readers may be able to intuit some plot beats from lyrics.)

Twenty-five-year-old Alexandra Crowe leaned back in her chair, her black, cordless office phone blending into the waves of her dark hair as she pressed it to her ear. "So, Mrs. Carey, why don't you go ahead and tell me what happened to your husband?"

Mrs. Carey, like all almost-certainly-widowed women, spoke in a voice thick with emotion. "That's what I need you to figure out, Miss Crowe. He just... disappeared on his drive home."

"And the police? What do they have to say about it?"

"Andrew is just another missing person to them. Nothing but a statistic. Look, I don't know what else to tell you. The police aren't doing anything, and the private investigator couldn't find a damn thing. You're my last shot—short of hiring some kind of psychic or something."

Alex scoffed, shaking her head. "Well, I'm glad you called here first. It's never a good idea to hire a psychic on your own. Between you and me, most of them are charlatans—the kind of awful people who just want to defraud money from the desperate and bereaved. I have contacts of my own; if a psychic is what it takes to find out what happened your husband, I'll make sure I find the right psychic to help. Now, did my assistant give you a rundown of my rates?"

"She did."

Perfect. "Alright. Then I'll be on the next flight to Jericho, Mrs. Carey. If your husband is still alive, I'm going to find him. If he's dead, I'll make sure that whoever killed him pays—or that whatever killed him never gets the chance to kill again."

"Thank you! Thank you! Please, do whatever it takes."

"You have my word."

Placing the phone back into its cradle, Alex grinned at the woman sitting across from her desk.

Maggie Holloway was a slender, sprightly woman in her eighties. She wore her long, silver hair in wild waves, and she seemed to go out of her way to always look like the world's most sweet and gentle grandmother. It went a long way toward hiding just how formidable she still was, even in her old age.

"You're taking the case, then?" asked Maggie.

"Sure am," said Alex. "Shouldn't be too hard. I already took a look at the missing persons information you brought me. It should be enough to go on. There's definitely a pattern here. That guy back in April, the guy in December last year, one the year before that, two in the 90s—and all of their cars found on the same little patch of road. Something's definitely up. Whether it's your run-of-the-mill serial killer or something more interesting, there's no way to tell yet... but based on who's dying, I'm leaning toward something more interesting. Very few serial killers go after middle-aged white men like our Mr. Carey here."

"Do you think you'll find him?"

"I really doubt it."

"Then do you think she'll actually pay?"

Alex shrugged. "Who cares? It's not like we need the money. As long as we get whatever's doing this, I'll be satisfied."

"And if it turns out to be nothing?"

Alex and Maggie shared a look—then both women laughed. "Can you book me the first flight out there? I want to make sure I'm well-rested before I go monster hunting. Last thing I need is to get killed again already."

Maggie scoffed. "You'd better not be so careless! I'm getting old. What happens if I die before you found someone to replace me?"

"Morbid!" Alex scolded. "Besides, how could I ever replace you?"

"I don't rightly know. But while we're on the subject of replacements, I think it's about time for me to remind you that you're all out of backup. Would you like me to start putting feelers out again while you're gone?"

Alex's good mood flagged. "Maggie... I don't want to go through this again."

"You've fired the last dozen candidates, Alex, and you haven't had a good reason for a single one of them. What's going on?"

Alex shook her head. "I had good reasons for all of them. I'm just sick of it."

"Sick of what, exactly?"

"People, Mags. You know trying to train someone up is a nightmare, and just when you think they're tough enough to make it, something nasty comes along and bumps 'em off. And anyone who already has the skill? I don't trust either a cop or a hunter as far as I can throw 'em. Look at me." Alex gestured down at herself—petite, slender, far from physically imposing. "Most of them would take one glance in my direction and decide to toss me to some beastie as bait. Or worse, give me a lecture on letting the boys do the tough jobs—and, oh hey, maybe I can go get them a sandwich instead?"

Maggie laughed. "It's not that bad, Alex. You know damn well that I don't let shit candidates get through to you. And you need a partner. No matter how good you are, dear, you can't get around that. People need people. You need someone who can help you out in the field. I certainly can't do it anymore!"

"And I'd never ask you to. I've got it covered, okay? If I need to hire some help, we can hire some help... but right now, I'm just not interested. Maybe if a really big job comes up or something, we can take a look at who's available. But for now? I'm definitely doing Jericho alone."

* * *

Jericho, California was a warm, sunny place to spend Halloween, and Alex Crowe started her afternoon by driving down the little stretch of road where men kept disappearing. Alex wasn't worried; even if her gender wasn't keeping her safe from whatever bump in the night was snatching men, the operative word was night. So far, all of the men had disappeared on their way home after sundown; in broad daylight, Alex didn't think that anyone was at risk, let alone herself.

But that meant she definitely wasn't running into the thing herself. Not right now, at least. There was no sign of ghosts or ghouls or even other motorists; Alex drove around for a little while, an EMF reader and a tape recorder running in the passenger seat. After twenty minutes of nothing, Alex moved on.

* * *

Catherine Carey's house was a typical two-story family home with a white picket fence and a happy-go-lucky golden retriever. All it was missing was the 2.5 kids... and, as of last month, a husband to father them.

Alex rang the doorbell, and a sullen-looking blonde woman in her forties answered the door. "Can I help you?"

"My name is Alex Crowe. We spoke on the phone?"

Realization ignited vigor in Mrs. Carey's listless expression. "Oh, Miss Crowe! Come in, please. Do you know anything yet? Have you... have you contacted a psychic?"

Stepping into the house—it smelled vaguely of fake "cookies baking" spray—Alex shook her head. "We're definitely not at that point yet, no. My investigation is just starting; there's a lot of ground to cover before we're at the point of bringing in any outside help. I took a drive past where your husband's car was found, and I'm going to be talking to a few other local people who have experienced similar disappearances."

"There are others?"

"There are, yes. Several, in fact, going back about twenty years—maybe longer. Men disappear from that particular area, and their cars are found right around that bridge."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, it could mean a number of things. The good news is that a serial killer is unlikely. The bad news is that it's definitely not something so simple as a kidnapping or runaway. One thing I did want to double-check was the possibility of a suicide. Your husband's car was found very near that bridge; did the police check the river?"

For a moment, Mrs. Carey looked affronted—the mention of suicide often did that to people—but then nodded reluctantly. "They did. They... also thought it might be a suicide, at first. But he wasn't there, Miss Crowe, and I promise that Andrew never would've done something like that."

"There wouldn't be any shame in it if he had," Alex said, and without pausing to offer any space for disagreement, she barreled on: "But that's good. If these disappearances were a pattern of suicide, that would be a really bad sign."

"A sign of what?"

"Anything that kills by faking elaborate suicides like that isn't a good thing. From a smart serial killer to a vengeful ghost or even a demon, nothing that makes people kill themselves is anything you want in your town. Now, that leaves me with a few leading theories. There's a pattern here, and it has a few key elements. All the victims were male, and I believe that almost of them were married at the time of their deaths. They all disappeared from the same area, which implies that it's the preferred hunting ground of someone or something, and there's a strict pattern to when the men are going missing. That there's a bridge involved might mean that the river plays some significance in whatever's happening. I'm going to be doing more research as soon as I leave here, and I'll hopefully have more information for you soon.

"Before I leave, though, ma'am, I wanted to ask you again if there's anything else you can tell me about your husband's disappearance. Is there anything strange that you might've seen or heard him mention in the days before he vanished? The slightest thing could turn out to be helpful."

Mrs. Carey shook her head slowly—paused for a moment—then shook it again with more vigor. "No. No, there's nothing."

"Anything could be a clue, Mrs. Carey. You're absolutely sure there's nothing? It could be something as simple as an odd odor in your husband's car, any kind of change in his routine, even a new person in his life."

Mrs. Carey, who had already appeared so sullen and defeated when she'd answered the door, now looked utterly destroyed. Whatever she was about to say, she clearly didn't want to admit it aloud. "I... had spoken to Andrew two days before his disappearance about... about the call history on his cell phone. The last month's bill was... well, it was twice as expensive as it usually was, and so I took a little look at his phone. I wasn't spying—not at first. I just assumed that something was wrong."

"And was something wrong?"

She swallowed. "Yes. But not what I was expecting. He had all these calls to and from some number I didn't recognize."

"And did you—"

"I did. It was a woman. I... didn't look into it any further than that."

"Would you be able to give me this number?"

She shook her head. "He had his cell phone with him when he disappeared. I don't know, maybe the company would have a record of it?"

"Alright, thank you. That might actually help me a lot. I might need you to get your hands on those records for me; if I do, I'd be happy to walk you through the process. For now, I'm going to see what else I can dig up, but again, thank you, Mrs. Carey. That really could be a lead."

* * *

Alex spent the rest of Halloween split between the library and her hotel room.

By the next morning, another man had disappeared.

* * *

Alex awoke to the sound of Bohemian Rhapsody belting from her cell phone.

_Mama, just killed a man / Put a gun against his head / Pulled my trigger, now he's—_

"What's up, Maggie?" Alex asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she tried to untangle herself from the hotel sheets.

"A local news website for Nevada county just posted a snippet about another disappearance in Jericho. The victim's name is still being withheld, but his car was left on that same bridge on Centennial. I'm sure they'll be diving in that river today, looking for a body; if you want to get out there and poke around, now's your chance."

Alex sighed. "Damn it. I was hoping to get this done before anyone else disappeared. Thanks, Mags. I'll head right over there and check it out."

"Sure thing, love."

* * *

Alex got stuck behind some old black muscle car on her way to the bridge. Its two occupants pulled over once they saw the road blocks set up to prevent anyone from driving through the crime scene, and Alex had no choice but to park her own rental right on their tail. She watched the driver give her a weird look in his side mirror as he said something to the man in the passenger seat, and then both men got out of their car and headed toward the cops.

_Huh. Not what I was expecting..._

Alex unbuckled her seat belt, sitting tight for a minute as she watched them both march right up to the crime scene—and then, much to her disbelief, she watched the driver give the cops the quickest flash of L.E.O. I.D. she'd ever seen. That, of course, was when Alex realized with a sinking feeling just who these two idiots were.

_Why can't luck ever work out in my favor?_

Alex got out of her rental and lingered at the driver's side door of the boys' flashy black ride as she waited for the cops to chase them off. It didn't take long.

The driver offered her what he surely thought was a very charming smile as he sauntered up to her with his taller counterpart in tow. "Hey, there," he said. "Uh, looks like they're gonna be busy here for a while. Think you'll have to turn around."

Now that they were up close, Alex found herself _very_ surprised. These two didn't do a great job of passing for law enforcement, but they easily could've both been models. The shorter one especially looked like he'd just walked out of some clothing catalog. "I noticed all the cops, yeah. I kinda figured they'd be here about the latest missing guy. I didn't figure on a couple of hunters, though. What're you boys doing here?"

Their easy, open posture vanished in a heartbeat; now both stared at her with unwelcoming suspicion. "Who are you?" demanded the driver. He was clearly squaring up for a fight, and the other man knew it; he cast an anxious glance over his shoulder at the officers.

Alex held out her business card. The driver pulled a face, then took it rather reluctantly. "The name's Alex. And unlike you, I'm getting paid to work this case, so if you two would kindly go find something else to do with yourselves, that would be very much appreciated."

The driver's eyebrows were stretching for his hairline. "Paranormal Investigator?" he read in the most scathing voice Alex had heard since Maggie had started screening her calls. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means that I do what you do, expect I get paid."

"You're—" The driver looked over shoulder, back at the cops, then took a step closer toward Alex before continuing in a quieter voice, "—you're charging people to save their lives?"

"Not usually, no. I'm charging people for exorcisms, psychic referrals, and the occasional monster hunt. People want to find out what happened to their missing loved ones. Some of those people have money."

Alex couldn't help but feel that the level of disgust on the two men's faces was rather unwarranted—not that she was surprised. Hunters were always so self-righteous about this. That was part of the reason she avoided working with them. "And what about the ones who don't?" demanded the passenger.

Alex shrugged. "If they call me, I help them. And I'm trying to help someone right now, so if you'd kindly fuck off, that would be great." She nodded toward the police behind the men's backs. "Besides, we're about to have company. I suggest you scram before they double-check that fake badge you flashed."

Alex barely had time to step away from the car before the driver rushed past her. He kept glaring at her even as he drove off.

Pulling out another of her cards, Alex threw on a smile and crossed her fingers that she'd be able to charm these already-suspicious officers.

* * *

Troy Squire had gone missing just like all the others. His car was abandoned on the bridge without any signs of struggle, and there was no body in the river below. The police saw no connections between any of the victims, and they had no good theories on what might've happened to them. What they did have was an unmistakable disdain for Alex and everything she stood for. Only one of them—the handsome young black man—was even polite to her; the aging-out-of-relevance white man in shades who walked like he thought he was God's gift to law enforcement outright laughed in her face and sent her off with words so dismissive that she would've been less offended if he'd just said "fuck off".

And just like that, Alex's investigation stalled.

With her flip phone pressed against her ear, Alex listened to it ring Mrs. Carey's number once, then twice, and then the woman picked up. "Hello? Miss Crowe?"

"Yeah, hi, Mrs. Carey. I'm afraid I have some bad news. Another man went missing last night. You didn't happen to know a Troy Squire, did you? Seems he was a local teen who didn't make it home. His car was found on the bridge."

"Uh... Squire? That might be Jill's boy."

"Do you know anything else about him? Since we're talking about the disappearance of a minor here, the cops aren't willing to give me any information at all."

"No, I'm afraid not. I know plenty of people in town, but not much about their kids. I could give you Jill's number, I suppose?"

"That would be great, thanks." Alex jotted the number down as Mrs. Carey recited it. "I'll let you know if I find out anything else. Bye."

Alex dropped her notepad and her cell phone into the passenger seat of her car. She wouldn't be able to talk to Jill Squire yet; the woman might not even know that her son was missing, and she wouldn't take kindly to whoever was unlucky enough to bring her the news. It looked like the Squire kid was a dead end for now.

Alex's eyes wandered to the tape recorder peeking out from beneath her notepad. She hadn't listened back to the tape yet; she'd completely forgotten to check it the night before. Since the EMF hadn't gone off, she didn't think there was any chance of having caught any EVP, but with nothing else to do, Alex snatched up the recorder and rewound the cassette.

For a good few minutes, there was nothing but typical static and the inherent noise of recording audio inside a moving car. But then, there it was. Alex's eyes went wide and she scrambled to rewind it again.

"That's a woman's voice," she muttered, furrowing her brow as she strained to listen closer. "What the hell is it saying?"

She'd have to run it through some of the audio programs on her laptop before she'd be able to make out the words. Satisfied with her new lead—and cursing herself for not catching it the night before—Alex raced back to her hotel.

* * *

"I can never go home," was an enigmatic but unsubtle statement. Alex didn't know who the woman was yet, but she knew a spirit when she heard one. There was unmistakable shame and regret in that woman's haunted whisper, and those emotions were almost always part and parcel of an vengeful ghost.

After that, it was just one quick Google search before Alex had a name. The only notable female death on Centennial Highway in recent history was one Constance Welch, a young mother who committed suicide after the drowning deaths of her two young children. And, of course, she killed herself right on the bridge where Troy Squire's car was found.

"Well, we've got our ghost," Alex muttered. She glanced toward the alarm clock on the hotel nightstand. It was only six o'clock.

Alex had two options now. She could either find the grave of Constance Welch, dig up the body, and destroy it... or she could _not_ pursue that very disgusting course of action and instead drive out to the bridge tonight and do a little ghost hunting herself. Getting spirits to move into the light on their own was always a crapshoot; Alex had only ever seen it happen once in the past thirty years. Still... it smelled a lot better than the other option. Provided no one else died at Constance's hands tonight, it had to be worth a try.

Alex laid down against the pillows. If she was going to be up all night chasing ghosties, she figured she deserved a nap.

* * *

That night, just like the morning that preceded it, there was a black impala in Alex's way when she drove up to the bridge. Again, she parked her rental behind it and went to join the hunters.

"Howdy, fellas!" she called, taking a certain amusement in the way the shorter of the two men—the one who had been the driver earlier—startled at the sound of her voice. "These new cars sure run quiet, don't they?"

"Oh, go home, would you?" groaned the shorter man. "Leave this to the professionals!"

Alex grinned as she pulled her EVP meter out of her bag. "Professionals get paid. So... seen anything spooky yet?"

"No," came the gruff, terse response.

"And I take it you know we're looking for a ghost, right?"

"We know," said the taller man, and something about the way he said it made Alex really look at him for the first time. "You know who it is?"

Alex nodded. "Constance Welch. Jumped off somewhere right over there. So... are you two boyfriends, brothers, what?"

The taller man laughed. "Brothers. I'm Sam. That's my older brother Dean."

"Nice to meet you, Sam and Dean. I hope."

Dean glared at the two of them. "Can we quit the small talk? In case you've both forgotten, there's a man-hating killer ghost somewhere nearby."

"Closer than you think," Alex said, nodding behind them.

Both men whirled around. The ghost of Constance Welch stood on the edge of the bridge, dark hair blowing in the breeze as her long, white dress fluttered around her legs. She was as beautiful as she had been in her obituary photo—and no doubt just as homicidal as Alex suspected she'd been in life.

Constance leaned toward the water... and then she was gone.

All three of them—Alex, Sam, and Dean—sprinted toward the edge of the bridge.

"Where'd she go?" Dean demanded.

Three pairs of eyes scanned the dark water beneath the bridge, but there was nothing to be seen. "I don't know," said Sam.

"She could be anywhere," said Alex. "She's a ghost; she doesn't actually have to fall. She could be—"

The unmistakable sound of a muscle car's ignition broke the relative silence of the night, and Alex's eyes went wide as she looked over her shoulder to see that damn impala turn its own headlights on.

"What the—?"

"Who's driving your car?" asked Sam.

Without a single word, Dean held up his keys.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Alex gasped as the car shot in their direction. Sam and Dean took off; Alex clambered up onto the railings of the bridge. "Don't run right in front of it, you idiots! Get out of its way!"

Much to her horror, both men were out of time. The car was so close on their heels that they had no choice—one, then the other leaped over the side of the bridge just as Constance had done only a few seconds before. The car stopped as soon as they were beyond its reach.

"Shit!" Alex yelled again. One massive splash meant one of them hit the muddy water below; the second splash never came.

In the darkness, Alex could just barely see where Sam was clinging to the support beams of the bridge. With a wary eye kept on the possessed impala, Alex rushed to help him. "Are you okay?" she asked, reaching out to help him.

"I'm fine," he said, ignoring her offered hand. He pulled himself up and over the edge of the bridge, then turned to peer down into the water. "Dean!?"

The man had crawled to the muddy bank. "What?"

"Hey, are you alright!?"

Covered in mud from head to toe, Dean sounded utterly defeated as he called back, "I'm super."

Sam's laugh was equal parts relief and schadenfreude. Alex did her best to hide her smile. If there was anything she did miss about working with other people, it was moments like this.

* * *

Once Dean had made his muddy, battered way back up onto the bridge, he wasted no time in popping the hood of his car and checking over every inch of the machine as lovingly as if it were a pet or a child that had been taken for a joyride by the ghost instead.

Sam, for his part, seemed as unimpressed by this as Alex did; he, though, seemed to have been expecting it, and he certainly seemed much more willing to indulge the quirk.

"Car alright?" he asked after a minute.

Alex found it absurd that the disgust written across Dean's face and positively dripping from his voice was the result of his car's violation rather than the thick coat of mud still encasing his body. "Yeah," he grumbled. "Whatever she did to it, it seems alright now. That Constance chick—what a bitch!"

Gender slurs were always _such_ fun. "Well, if you guys are good to go, I think I'll head out. I doubt Constance is going to be showing up again tonight, which means I'd best get started trying to track down her body."

"What the hell have you been hanging around for, then? You could've left as soon as she did." Dean's voice dropped to a nasty mutter, "You could've just not shown up at all."

"I had been planning to offer you a ride back to your hotel if your car was fried," Alex said, a brow raised, "but apparently that wouldn't have been appreciated anyway. Oh, well. That's hunters for you. Have a nice night, boys! Try not to fall off any more—"

"Wait, Alex," said Sam. His voice was a gentle and friendly as his brother's was rude and unwelcoming, and Alex found that it did actually make her pause. "Why don't we just work together. Three brains are better than one, aren't they? People are dying here. The sooner we get Constance taken care of, the safer this town's gonna be."

"Technically, we don't have any actual proof yet that anyone's dead." Alex sighed. "Alright. Do you guys actually have a lead, or are you just stumbling in the dark here?"

Dean pointed an angry finger at her. "None of your business," he growled, and he turned incredulously to his brother. "You can't be serious, Sammy! We're not working with this chick. She hunts for cash, you remember this, right?"

"I think that just means she's smarter than us, man."

With Dean doing a wonderful imitation of a goldfish, Sam turned back to Alex. "We're pretty much out of leads at this point. What about you?"

"I've got some stuff I could check out. I don't expect any of it to be especially useful, though, which is I haven't done it yet. My client thinks her husband was cheating, which could be a motive for his death; I could go after the guy's phone records to try to confirm it, of course, but I think it'd be a better use of time to see if the kid had a girlfriend and if either Constance Welch or her husband was cheating. My next best guess for a motive is murder; Constance supposedly killed her kids, either intentionally or accidentally or maybe even psychotically. There's a possibility that she's killing other people who've killed their kids, or people who've killed a kid in general, or even just people who've killed. Since all her victims have been men, though, my money's on the cheating thing. No offense."

Dean sneered at her. Alex went on. "But all that's just extra stuff anyway. We don't have to jump through those hoops since we already know who the ghost is. We just have to find her and torch her, and we're good to go."

Sam and Dean shared a look. Dean rolled his eyes, then nodded begrudgingly. "We actually already talked to Troy's girlfriend," said Sam. "She's the one who told us about Constance. You know about the legend?" Impressed in spite of herself, Alex shook her head. "The local teens have a story about a murdered woman who hitchhikes and kills whoever picks her up. Of course, that's Constance, and they just changed the suicide to murder to make it more dramatic."

Alex looked them over again, more appreciatively this time. "That's actually not bad work, boys. Color me pleasantly surprised. Indulge me: how'd two pretty boys like you end up hunters?"

Each looked very startled, either by the question or their descriptor. Maybe both.

"Sam," Dean warned.

"Our dad's a hunter, too," Sam said, polite but definitive. Obviously, Alex was not supposed to ask questions.

"Family business, then?"

"Something like that. What about you?"

Sam, Alex noticed, did not rise to what she felt would be his only ever excuse to imply she was just a pretty face, too. She gave him quite a bit of credit for that he didn't take it. 

"Something like that," she echoed. At Dean's very scathing look, Alex glanced away and pretending to be suddenly very interested in her own car. "Well, I'm gonna go search for some wifi and see if I can't track down a gravesite for our dearly departed murderer. You still have my card?" Sam rather sheepishly shook his head. She sighed, withdrawing another one from her wallet and offering it very pointedly to him instead of his brother. "You guys got a number?"

As Sam rattled his mobile number off to her, Alex patiently typed it into her flip phone, then gave him a smile. "Perfect. If I find anything, I'll give you boys a call. You find something... well, feel free to do the same."

She offered them a wave as she headed back to her own little car, and as she walked away, she very distinctly heard Dean grunt to his brother, "She's not really gonna call us."

* * *

It was sometime after dawn on Sunday when Alex got Sam's text. "U were right," it read. "Welch is a woman n white. Will talk 2 her husband."

Alex stared down at the text blankly for a moment, then looked back up at the mortuary she'd been parked in front of for the last hour. She had planned to go in, talk to the oldest employee she could find, and ask whether they could point her to the grave of Constance Welch. She normally wouldn't expect then to give out such information to random strangers, which was why she also planned to present herself as a relative who wanted to pay her respects but was on too bad of terms with Constance's former husband to ask him for the location directly. It was roundabout and far from guaranteed to work, but her method also wouldn't have gotten the potentially volatile survivor of murdered children and a suicidal spouse involved.

Competent they may be, it appears the boys lacked that particular dash of empathy.

Alex considered it a moment longer, then shook her head. She was going with her plan, not theirs. If they wanted to run around and cause haphazard emotional damage left and right, that was their problem, not hers.

But she didn't have to wait long with her decision.

_Mama, just killed a man / Put a gun against—_

Sam was calling.

"Hello?" Alex asked. "I got your text. You're not talking to the husband now, are you?"

"No, I haven't gone to see him yet," Sam said. He sounded oddly anxious and a bit out of breath.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." He paused. "...Dean just got arrested."

Alex was so startled, she couldn't stop her blurt of laughter. "I'm sorry, what? Oh, wait, no, let me guess. The police realized you guys were impersonating officers? Not a good idea if you want to avoid jail time, guys. How the hell did you get away?"

"He warned me in time, and I slipped out. Look, I still want to go talk to Joseph Welch. I've got the address right here. Do you want to come with me?"

Alex looked, once again, up at the sign for Summerhall Mortuary. "Why don't you come with me, instead? I'm at the mortuary right now, I'm sure they'll—"

"I can't risk being seen by the police," Sam interrupted, surprisingly firm. "It's safer if I just ask the husband."

"And it's safer for him if you don't. Look, I'm sure he knows where his wife is buried, but it's probably gonna be pretty hard to get the information out of him. More likely than not, she killed his children, and I guarantee either strongly suspects it or else refuses to even consider it. And whichever the case is, I'm sure he's not going to be happy with some rando asking where they can find his dead wife's corpse."

The line was silent for a moment. "I'm going, Alex. Are you coming with me, or am I jacking someone's car?"

Fucking hunters. "Fine. But try for some subtlety, won't you? And if he ends up shooting one of us, it had better not be me."

Sam chuckled as he told her where he'd be waiting, and when Alex hung up a minute later, she stared down at her phone in silence for a moment before she started up her car and very begrudgingly drove away.

* * *

Joseph Welch lived in one of the junkiest neighborhoods that Alex had ever seen. She'd been in worse, sure—she'd even lived in worse, once upon a time—but this easily was the worst place she'd visited since the new millennium began. It was a sad place, all bare dirt and rusted metal, ramshackle houses and the decaying shells of cars, and broken down people with dejected, weathered faces.

As she and Sam approached the door of Welch's trailer, Sam pulled an old photo from his wallet. "What's that?" Alex asked, peering at it curiously.

For a split second, he pulled the photo back as if to hide it from her. Then he visibly gave up, and he held it up for her to see. "That's my dad. And, uh, the kids are me and Dean. It's an old photo."

"And you think this is how you're going to bond with Welch enough for him to spill his secrets?"

Sam grimaced. "Not exactly." They walked up the few steps to the door.

"What exactly, then?"

Sam paused in the act of lifting his hand to knock. "My dad was actually the one who was going to work this case with Dean, not me. I don't really hunt anymore."

"What're you doing here, then? Your dad got a better case?"

"I don't know. Dean and I can't find him. He's not answering his phone, and all his stuff is still in his motel room. I don't know what happened to him, and I'm running out of time to find out."

"Wait, why? What's the timelock here?"

"I've gotta get back to Stanford before tomorrow."

Alex's brows lifted right up to her hairline. "Stanford?" she repeated. "Damn, dude. Good for you." Again, she looked him over carefully, recontextualizing. "So you're really not a hunter, are you? Not the way your dad and Dean are, at least."

"Not if I can help it."

"Well, I hope you find your dad, then."

Sam stared at her for a moment. "Thanks," he said finally, and then he turned his attention back to the door and knocked.

Joseph Welch opened it almost immediately, his arms crossed over his chest and a look of utter disgust on his face. "You two gonna chat on my doorstep all day, or d'you plan to tell me what the hell it is you want?"

Alex looked expectantly at Sam. This was his plan; let him do the heavy lifting. "Hi," Sam started, and suddenly Alex could definitely see eager college kid in him, "uh, are you Joseph Welch?"

"Yeah."

Sam held up the photo. "I'm sorry if this sounds weird, but could you take a look at this photo for me? Do you recognize the man?"

Welch leaned over the threshold, squinting at the picture. "Yeah. He was older, but I recognize him. He came by three or four days ago, said he was a reporter."

Sam rolled with it easily, like he'd been doing this all his life. (If his father was really a hunter, he probably had.) "That's right. We're working on a story together."

Welch didn't seem to believe this. He gave both Sam and Alex their own individual skeptical surveys. "Well, I don't know what the hell kind of story you're working on. The questions he asked me..."

"About your late wife, Constance?"

Welch looked disgusted. "He asked me where she was buried."

Alex did her best not to match his expression. Clearly, Sam and Dean had picked up their knack for bright ideas and emotional understanding from their dad. "And where is that again?" Sam asked.

"What, I gotta go through this twice?"

"It's fact checking, if you don't mind."

Now, Alex couldn't help casting Sam an incredulous look. How the hell did that make any sense? That was not remotely what "fact checking" meant.

Welch was silent for a moment, then sighed heavily. "...in a plot behind my old place over on Breckenridge."

"Why did you move?" Sam asked, and now Alex's expression grew horrified. What kind of dumbass question was that?

"I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died."

"Of course not, sir," Alex interrupted quickly, "and we're very sorry for your loss."

"Well, thanks, I guess, but it was twenty years ago." He narrowed his eyes at her. "Probably before you were even born."

Alex smiled brightly and completely falsely, very much unamused. If there was one thing she hated about life, it was the constant dismissal of youth. (And old age but that wasn't her problem right now.) 

"Mr. Welch, did you ever—"

Alex grabbed Sam's arm, her fingers curling so tightly into the sleeve of his thick jacket that he winced and glanced over at her. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Welch, that's all the questions we have for you. If you happen to see that other reporter again, could you please give us a call at this number?" She dug into her pocket, looking for one of the few cards she carried that didn't have 'Paranormal Investigator' listed as her job title; she doubted Welch would be particularly pleased with that.

He took her card from her very hesitantly. "Sure, I guess," he said, though his expression had now grown even more suspicious and confused.

Still gripping his arm as tightly as she physically could, Alex led Sam away from Welch's porch and back to her car. "Why'd you interrupt me?" he demanded once they were out of earshot.

"Are you kidding? We got the info we need. You don't need to interrogate him anymore. Let's go salt and burn this corpse before it kills anyone else!"

"But he might know something else about—"

"We don't need to know anymore, Sam. It's not our goddamn business why he doesn't live in the house where his kids were murdered, or whether he realizes that their deaths were because his infidelity made his wife completely snap, or whether he thinks it's possible that his dead wife has been killing people for twenty years. None of that is important. That's just our curiosity; it's not the job. So let's go do the job, yeah?"

Sam was staring at her like he couldn't believe his ears. Alex ran a hand through her hair and forced herself—for the first time in a long time—to extend some understanding toward a hunter, too. "Look, just imagine what he feels like, having lost his wife decades ago only to find himself fielding a bunch of creepy-ass questions from three different strangers within the span of a week. Asking where the body's buried is fucking weird, and pushing beyond that is seriously testing him. You wouldn't want someone coming at you the way you were about to come at him. We can always come back and talk to him again if we really need to, okay?"

"Yeah. Right." Sam barely even glanced in her direction as he settled into her passenger seat, and Alex just shook her head minutely. More reasons she didn't like to work with people. People, generally speaking, were not usually good about either respecting other people's boundaries or about taking any criticism. Not even the Good Guys™ like Sam.

* * *

They drove in silence. Sam stared at his cellphone the whole time, obviously hoping that either his dad or his brother might call.

Neither did.

* * *

After two hours of combing the yard all around the house where Constance Welch had murdered her children, Sam and Alex were forced to give it up. There was no headstone, no cross, nothing at all to mark where the body was buried, and they certainly couldn't waste the whole day blindly digging in hopes of stumbling upon the corpse.

"Any ideas?" Alex asked.

"This is why we should've asked Mr. Welch more questions."

"What, like, 'Can you tell us specifically where on the property you buried your wife's body?' I'm sure that would've gone over well."

Sam sighed. "If we're gonna have to dig this whole place up, we'll need Dean's help."

"So, what, we're gonna wait until the cops let him go? The D.A. might prosecute, Sam. Impersonating an officer to get onto a crime scene isn't nothing."

Now Sam smiled at her. "Yeah, I didn't really plan on waiting." Alex watched, baffled, as he pulled out his cellphone, and she peered over his shoulder with rapidly rising skepticism as he punched into the numbers 9-1-1.

Alex could only hear Sam's half of the conversation, but she had to hand it to him: he wasn't if bad as an actor. He sounded genuinely terrified.

"No, no, no, no, there's no time for that! Look, I'm at the corner of Whiteford Road, and I just heard a bunch of gunshots. Please, I know what a gun sounds like, and that was definitely a gun! I think someone's just shot someone—down by the motel, maybe. It sounded really close by. Please hurry!"

He flipped the phone off, looking smug. Alex shrugged. "If it works, it works. But they can trace the call back to your phone, you know. You'll have to get rid of it."

Sam's smile became a smirk. "That's why I used Dean's."

Alex laughed. "Well played."

* * *

Sure enough, Dean called about an hour later, and less then ten minutes after Sam relayed the address of Constance Welch's former home, Dean's Impala pulled into the driveway.

"How the hell'd you get the car out of the impound lot?" Sam asked incredulously.

There was an extra bit of swagger in Dean's step as he walked around to the back of the car. "By being awesome, little brother." He gave Alex what she supposed must be a friendly nod of acknowledgement. "A fake 911 call, though? I don't know, lawyer boy, that's pretty illegal."

"A lawyer, huh?"

"Not yet," Sam said. "Not at all if I can't get back to Stanford by tomorrow morning. So we better do this quick, Dean."

"Okay, where's the body?"

Alex gestured around at the overgrown grass. "Your guess is as good as mine. She's around here somewhere, but we're not going to find her without either the right equipment or a hell of a lot of time."

Dean popped open his trunk, and he tossed his brother a shovel. "Guess we better get started, then."

Alex looked from Sam to Dean, then to the shovel, then to the vast and untamed yard. "I'm gonna make a call first, if you two don't mind. I'll be back in just a minute to help."

And Alex wandered off in search of Maggie's help.

* * *

Alex got the call from Maggie a little while after dusk. "Thanks, Mags. You're a lifesaver." She flipped her phone shut and turned to the boys, each of whom was dirty and exhausted from several hours of pointless digging. "Alright, guys, I've got a GPR machine waiting for me down at a private airfield about a forty-five minutes north of here. If there's no objections, I'm headed out to fetch it."

"Wait, what?" Dean demanded.

"I told you we needed equipment, didn't I? Obviously we've not had any luck without it."

"So you, what, had a machine flown in?" Sam asked. "How did you...? You've been digging this whole time."

"I told you I had to make a call. My assistant had my machine flown over. I mean, it took a few hours, sure, but it was quicker than trying to rent one. Now I just have to go pick it up, we'll run it around for a little while to see if we can't find her rotten ass, and then you're free to go be a college kid. Everyone wins."

She gave them a big smile and a tiny wave, then slid behind the wheel of her car. "Try not to get arrested before I get back!"

* * *

About an hour and a half later, Alex was almost back to the old Welch place with the bulky machine crammed very precariously into the back of her car. She pressed her flip phone to her ear and listened as it rang.

"Hello?" Dean's voice answered on the other end. "Who is this?"

"You forgot about me already? I'm heartbroken, Dean." She could practically hear the sneer on his face. "I've got the machine, and I'm about five, maybe ten minutes from the house. Assuming you're not already back in jail, we should be able to finish this up pretty soon. Hell, you can probably tell Sam to take a nap if he wants. I assume he's got some kind of, like, test in the morning, since he's so eager to get back to school, so go ahead and let him know that you and I can handle this on our own."

"It's an interview," Dean said. "And I'd tell him if he were here. He's out getting food right now."

"Aren't the cops looking for the two of you?"

"We got hungry, what can I say?"

If Alex were careless enough to take her eyes from the road that long, she would've turned her gaze instead to the heavens and demanded why the extra model-pretty brother had to be the somewhat dim, rather rude one who didn't seem to like her much. "Fine, whatever. I'll be back in a few minutes, that's my point."

Alex's car, going just a little over the speed limit, was coming up on another on the road ahead. It only took a second for her to recognize it. "Oh, shit, I'm actually right behind him on the—FUCK!"

Alex slammed on her breaks, dropping the phone as she scrambled to get both hands on the wheel. The Impala had skidded to a dead stop right in front of her, and Alex had barely enough road to keep herself from rear-ending it. She doubted Dean would ever forgive her if she'd fucked up his car.

Wondering what exactly had just happened, Alex went to unbuckle her seatbelt so she could go check on Sam... and then she noticed that there wasn't just one person sitting in the idling black car. Sam, hulking behemoth that he was, sat unmistakably in the driver's seat, but he wasn't alone; a figure, black-haired and wearing white, sat in the back seat behind him.

Alex's stomach did a loop-the-loop in her guts. Constance Welch, ghostly murderer, was in Sam and Dean's car. Had Sam seen her yet? Alex couldn't tell.

But before Alex could so much as reconsider getting out of her car and helping him, the Impala was already barreling down the road, back toward the house. Alex stared after it in disbelief, glanced down at her fallen phone, and realized she couldn't reach it. "CONSTANCE IS GOING AFTER SAM!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, hoping that Dean would be able to hear her, and then she put her foot down on the gas pedal and floored it after Sam's car.

Alex followed them all the way back to the house. The Impala turned into the driveway; Alex's car skidded to a stop in the middle of the street. She flung herself out of the car, nearly choking herself on the seatbelt as she scrambled to get it off, and in the front seat of the Impala, it looked as if Constance Welch had squeezed herself into the space between Sam's body and the steering wheel. Her hands were all over him, fingers threading into his hair as she pressed her lips to his; but he was struggling, trying to pull away from her, and the most absurd thought crossed Alex's mind.

As a woman in white, Constance Welch only killed unfaithful men. But how many of those men were 'unfaithful' only because of what she did to them after they'd caught her eye?

Alex pulled her literally iron tire iron—a go-to weapon if ever she had one—out of her trunk and stomped toward the Impala. But she wasn't fast enough; Dean was already there at the window, his pistol in his hands, and he shot the windows clean out.

Constance disappeared—but only for a moment. She blinked back into existence as if nothing had happened, and now that Alex was closer, she could see that the specter's beautiful face was now a garish mask of death. The lips had rotted away, exposing the teeth in a nightmarish imitation of a living face, and the mottled skin surrounding her mouth made her look like something that could only dwell in the darkest recesses of the human mind.

And yet here she was, and she was killing Sam.

"Hey, baby-killer!" Alex yelled, scrambling for the door handle and hoping that Dean wouldn't accidentally shoot her by mistake. "It's not infidelity if it's a sexual fucking assault!"

Alex screamed as the world seemed to explode around her; she'd put too much trust in Dean. He'd fired again, two bullets whizzing right past Alex's head, and she fell onto the grass, holding her ringing ears. For a heartbeat, she wasn't even sure if he'd shot her or not.

And by the time she got her bearings back, the Impala was gone and Dean was yelling Sam's name. Another deafening noise rang out, but now it was the sound of the Impala crashing into Constance's long-abandoned family home. Dean raced after the car, and after Alex managed to pull herself up to her feet, she did, too.

Constance, in her white dress with her pretty face back in place, ignored both the boys as they struggled to escape the Impala. Alex stumbled through the wreckage, wishing quite fervently that she'd grabbed her own gun instead of the surprisingly useless tire iron—

—and turned as the temperature of the room seemed to drop below zero within the span of a heartbeat.

Constance was not the only ghost here.

They all looked up at the same time—Alex, Sam, Dean, and Constance—and Constance's children stared at their mother for a moment before blinking out of existence. They reappeared right in front of her, opening their arms to her as if to embrace her in a hug. But when their four little arms closed around her body, Constance shrieked like she'd just found herself within the depths of hell, and all three spectral bodies began to flash and smoke and sizzle.

Constance screamed and screamed, her agony echoing off the worn wooden walls... and then she was gone, and so were her kids, and Alex's ears started ringing even louder in the newfound stillness and silence of the house.

"...she drowned her kids," Alex heard the tail-end of Dean's sentence as he approached the spot where the ghosts had imploded.

"We already knew that..." Alex muttered, but she couldn't tell if her voice was loud enough for them to hear. Or maybe she was yelling? She had no idea.

"That's why she could never go home," Sam said, staring down at the eerie little puddle that was all that was left of Constance Welch and her two kids. "She was too scared to face them."

"You found her weak spot. Nice work, Sammy." Dean clapped his brother hard on the shoulder.

Sam laughed, though he seemed to be in more than a bit of pain. "Wish I could say the same for you. What were you thinking, shooting Casper in the face, you freak?"

"You nearly shot me, too, by the way!"

Dean shrugged. "Saved us all, didn't it? Besides, I'm a good shot. I wouldn't have hit either of you." He leaned down, examining the Impala. Wooden beams and dust covered it. "I'll tell you another thing. If you screwed up my car, I'll kill you."

Sam offered his brother a huge smile, but Alex had the bad feeling that there wasn't as much joke in that threat as she would've liked. Dean had, quite literally, fired his gun at the both of them. So what if he thought he was a good shot? That didn't actually mean much, at the end of the day. Everybody misses sometimes.

"Right," Alex said, trying to compose herself. She was still trembling, and her rapidly calming mind, which had been through shit like this many times before, couldn't seem to reassure her body that the danger was gone. "Well, that was certainly something. I would've much preferred burning her, but I guess that works, too. So, uh... I'm gonna go, I guess. Because my head hurts now, and, uh, yeah."

"You sure you're okay?" Sam asked, his wide grin of amusement morphing into a concerned frown. "You don't really look fit to drive."

"I'm fine, trust me," she said. "The adrenaline will wear off in a minute. I promise I've been through much worse than that."

Dean visibly did not believe her; Alex didn't give a damn. Her tremble was starting to subside. "Best of luck at Stanford, Sam, and I hope you guys find your dad. I'll give you guys a ring if I happen to run into him or anything like that. What'd you say his name was?"

Sam and Dean shared a glance. "John," Dean said with an edge of reluctance. "John Winchester."

Nope. She definitely didn't have time to deal with this. She couldn't believe she'd just worked a case with John Winchester's sons without even fucking realizing.

"Right. If I hear anything, I'll be sure to pass it along. See you around, boys."

She marched off to her car with all the dignity she could muster and tossed her tire iron into the passenger seat. Her phone was still somewhere down on the floor; she didn't bother trying to find it now as she sped off back to her hotel.

Right now, all Alex wanted to do was sleep. She could deal with missing hunters and GPR machines and potential eardrum injuries later. And in the morning, she'd have to make sure that she gave Mrs. Carey a call.

Considering what she'd been through tonight—and what might be on the horizon, if John Winchester had really abandoned his sons—she wanted to make sure she got her money after all.


	2. We'll Meet Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the case in Jericho finished up, Alex never expects to see Sam or Dean Winchester again. So with the mystery of John's disappearance as a very minor footnote in the back of her mind, Alex goes promptly back to her normal life—taking cases, hunting monsters, and generally making the most use of her time. But when she gets a call about a missing camper up in Colorado, Alex finds herself inexplicably tangled up with the Winchesters again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I. I was stunned to discover that the actress playing Haley was actually thirty(!?), while the actors playing her brothers were both teenagers; for the purposes of this story, I'm assuming that Haley was supposed to be in her early twenties.
> 
> II. The old man in this episode is identified on the wiki only as "Shaw"; I have assumed this is his last name and chosen a first name for him (Donnelly, which is the first name of the actor who portrayed the character). If I've missed his actual full name somewhere, feel free to let me know.
> 
> III. Grizzly-polar bear hybrids weren't conclusively proven to exist until sometime in 2006, so it might be a slight anachronism to have Alex referencing them here. It's a super minor line that has no bearing on anything and could've easily been removed, but it amused me and I don't think it's _too_ egregious, so here it stays. *shrug*
> 
> IV. _The Descent_ didn't come to America until 2006. Feel free to assume that Alex saw it in U.K. theatres.

Mrs. Carey didn't pay up until after Alex combed the entire Breckenridge house and yard for her husband's corpse. Alex finally found it buried under the floorboards, not too far from where the Impala had crashed the night before.

Explaining everything to the cops took another day and a half, and then Maggie called with a job about a poltergeist in Wyoming. Alex considered telling her to start digging around for a lead on what the hell might've happened to John Winchester, but she decided to hold off on that for now. She'd never met the man herself—only knew him by reputation—but she'd heard more than enough to realize that she didn't want to be involved, if she could avoid it.

John Winchester was obsessed with some demon who'd supposedly killed his wife and torched his house, and if he'd finally ditched his kids after twenty years of dragging them around the country, it might very well mean that he was closing in on the thing.

Or it might mean that he was already dead.

In any case, Alex tied things up in Jericho, spent another few days cleansing the poltergeist out of a family home in the cowboy state, and then flew back to Maryland. 

Alex had built Old Stones Manor back in the 1830's, when her name had been Lisbeth Summers. She'd lived there ever since (barring some necessary exceptions), always keeping an assistant or two around to maintain the place when Alex herself could not.

Maggie, Alex's current assistant, greeted her at the door. "So, tell me about Jericho," she said in a much-too-knowing voice as Alex headed toward her office.

"Ghost, corpse, murders. What's there to tell? The poltergeist was just as interesting."

"Oh, no. You can't pull the wool over my eyes, young lady!" Alex laughed in spite of herself; hearing Mags try to scold her was always hilarious. "You sounded different on the phone when I sent you off after that poltergeist. Something happened in California, and I'm fairly sure it wasn't just that you'd got yourself a tan."

"I'm not tanned at all right now, so no."

Mags only offered her a wry smile. "What did happen, then?"

Finally at the door to her office, Alex turned the knob and peered inside. Her desk, completely clear when she left for California a week ago, had now become the resting place for a tall stack of folders that Alex knew from experience could only be resumes. She groaned. "Seriously, Maggie?"

"What?" the old woman asked. "You said you'd hire help if you needed it, and I decided there's no time like the present for gathering prospective candidates. You don't have to choose anyone, but you might as well look!"

Alex sighed. "Alright, fine. You've worn me down."

Maggie blinked, momentarily rendered silent by surprise. Then: "You'll hire someone? That was shockingly simple. You're not normally so easily convinced."

"No," said Alex, "I mean I'll tell you what happened in Jericho." She moved behind her desk and sank down into the familiar comfort of her leather chair. "A pair of hunters was in town, working the same damn case from a different angle."

"I hope you left them alive in spite of this terrible transgression?"

"Ha, ha," said Alex. "Aren't you a riot? The hunters, Mags..." She shook her head, still not entirely sure she believed it herself. "They were John Winchester's sons."

Maggie's silver brows lifted like rising clouds. "You ran into Winchester?"

"No, I didn't. That's the point. He wasn't there; his kids said he's missing."

"John Winchester has been at this a long while now. Aren't his kids grown yet?"

"Pretty sure one of them's older than me. The baby's maybe a year or two younger than I am, and apparently he's going to be a lawyer pretty soon."

"He's at university?" Maggie's shock was palpable. "I can't believe Winchester let that boy out of his sight for a moment, let alone long enough to go to school."

"That's just it, though, isn't it? Sam and Dean say they don't know where he is, and if their calls are even getting through to him, they're not getting any response back. I hate to say it, but I think the crazy bastard might actually be closing in on that demon."

"Or something finally sent him completely 'round the bend." Maggie's lips twisted into a playful smile, and her eyes suddenly sparked with mischief. "But you're on a first name basis with his sons now, are you? How exciting."

"This is America, Maggie. Everyone's on a first name basis here."

"Oh, nevermind that! Did you work with these young hunters, then? You at least said you didn't kill them."

"Well, of course I didn't kill them; I don't need Winchester hunting me for twenty years, too." Alex flipped idly through the top folder, read the name 'Bela', and cast a glare in Maggie's direction as she tossed the folder aside.

"Were they handsome young men? John Winchester isn't terribly bad on the eyes, from what I've heard."

"His sons could be models. The older one, especially."

Maggie broke into a wide grin and a cackle. "That good, eh?"

"They're both gorgeous, tall as shit, and one of them's obviously pretty goddamn smart, since he apparently got into Stanford to study law. I never would've believed it if they hadn't told me themselves."

Maggie gestured impatiently toward the phone. "Well? You got their numbers, didn't you? Call them up, offer them a job or a partnership or something!"

Alex stared. "Why on earth would I do that?"

Maggie looked positively delighted by this entire vaguely baffling exchange. "Because competent _and_ pretty is perhaps the very best kind of backup."

"Yeah, even if we were on the same page there (which we're not, by the way), did I forget to mention that these are Winchester's kids? Working with them would mean working with Winchester himself, and I'm not suicidal."

"Oh, please. You could handle him. Besides, he's got no reason to dislike you. Your memories—"

"Still not inclined to risk it. Anyway, what would be the point? The smart son's fucked off to college by now. Apparently he's a good boy." Alex smiled faintly, amused at the very notion of John Winchester's youngest son growing up to become an upstanding citizen. "And the pretty one doesn't seem to like me much. It's mostly mutual. Point being, I don't plan on playing ball with Winchesters anytime soon."

Maggie sighed her most dramatic sigh and raised her hands in defeat. "Fine. I know a lost cause when I see one, I suppose. In any case, I left you a note by the phone. A rather young-sounding fellow called an hour ago, asking for help with some kind of a missing person's case. I told him you'd call back when you could. If you're ready, he did sound very anxious for your help."

"Alright, thanks." Alex leaned forward, snatching up the sticky note beside her office phone. As Maggie left the room with an odd little smile playing at the corners of her lips, Alex picked up the phone and dialed.

"Hello?"

Maggie had been right. The voice on the other end of the phone sounded male and young, close to being a man but still mired in the depths of adolescence. And even though he'd only said a single word so far, Alex could hear the fear in his voice. His tone was tight and tense and audibly terrified, and Alex put on her brightest smile, even though he couldn't see it, and opted to go for comforting instead of chipper.

"Hi. This is Alexandra Crowe returning a call from a Mr..." She double-checked her post-it note. "Collins?"

There came a sharp intake of breath, then a flood of frenzied words. "Yes, yes, this is Ben Collins. I'm calling about my older brother Tommy—"

"My assistant said you believe him to have gone missing?"

"Yes! He went up to Blackwater Ridge for a camping trip with his friends, and we haven't heard from him in a few days. My sister and I think—no, we're sure—that something happened to him."

"Was he supposed to have been back by now?"

Now, the kid hesitated. "Well, no, but something's definitely happened to him."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because he calls us every day to check in with Haley—that's my sister—and me. And he always sends emails and photos and videos of what he's doing up there. But the past two days have been completely quiet. Dead silence. Something must have gone wrong."

It sounded possible, sure, but nothing the kid had said so far hinted at why he was calling Alex instead of the police. "Okay, so he keeps in touch with you guys through his cellphone? Do you think it's possible that his batteries ran out sooner than he expected, or maybe that the phone itself died?"

Now, the silence on the other end stretched out a little longer. "Tommy camps all the time. Nothing like this has ever happened. And—" Ben's voice strengthened, growing more resolved with every word. "—he knows that we count on those calls and stuff to make sure he's safe. He knows how important it is for us to know that he's okay out there. If his phone had died or whatever, he would've come home. He wouldn't have stayed there and let us worry."

Alex hesitated, then nodded. Fair enough. The kid might be overestimating his brother's concern for his siblings, sure, but he certainly sounded convinced. And Alex had certainly investigated less.

"Alright. I believe you. But what I don't understand, Ben, is why you're talking to me instead of the police. Or the park rangers. Have you told all this to them?"

"Haley's been at the ranger station a bunch already. The guy there, Wilkinson, he doesn't believe her. He thinks Tommy's just, I don't know, trying to be more independent or something. He doesn't get it."

Truth be told, Alex didn't think she quite got it, either, but she was beginning to suspect that the Collins family might be suffering from some serious co-dependency issues. Or maybe just regular dependency issues, if Tommy Collins really was giving his brother and sister a silent 'fuck off'.

"Okay. I can't pretend I'm surprised by that response; law enforcement of any kind always has to pick their battles, and unfortunately they don't always pick right. But I still have to ask, why _me_? I've done my fair share of missing persons cases before, yes, but... well, you realize I'm a P.I. as in paranormal investigation, not as in your typical private eye, right?"

"Yeah, I—I know. It's just that... well, this is gonna sound a little weird, but I actually _found_ your card."

Didn't sound weird yet. "...okay?"

"No, I mean I _found_ it. Like, in my stuff. I have no idea how it got there. I'd never even heard of you before. But somehow I had your business card, and then I looked you up online, and your website said all this weird stuff about working with psychics and hunting ghosts and cleansing houses and stuff, and..."

Alex smiled. Now, things were making a bit more sense. "And you thought that if anyone might believe you without proper evidence, it would probably be me?"

"...yeah, I guess."

"Alright, Ben. You've piqued my interest; I'd like to help you if I can. But before I can commit to anything, I have to ask the obvious question: how old are you, exactly?"

"Sixteen."

"Okay. I know this is gonna sound pretty frustrating to you, Ben, but because you're a minor, I can't take up this case for you without talking to at least one of the adults in your life. Do you live with your parents?"

"No. They're... they're gone."

"I'm very sorry to hear that, Ben. Do you live with some other relatives, maybe? Or is your sister Haley over eighteen?"

"Well, yeah, but..."

"But you're not sure she's gonna want someone like me to get involved? I understand. Maybe there's another adult in either your life or your brother's life who might be more open to my help? Like, maybe your brother has a girlfriend who's starting to get concerned, or your grandparents, or maybe a teacher, if he's in college? A neighbor, even?"

Ben was quiet for a long moment, and Alex realized with a sinking feeling that there wasn't anyone else. These kids were even more isolated and dependent upon each other than she'd thought. "It's just me and Haley," he said finally. "What if she doesn't want...?"

"Alright. Tell you what... I do need to talk to your sister, but we can do this in a way that might make her more open the idea of working with me. You said she's been trying to get the park rangers to help her, right? If nothing else, that means she is interested in getting _someone's_ help. What you should do is go talk to your sister and tell her that you contacted someone on your own, and that she might not like who you chose to contact, but that you explained everything to me already and I'm more than willing to help. And..." Alex hesitated, considering. She couldn't properly discuss her normal rates with a sixteen-year-old, and she rather doubted this family of not-quite- and barely-legals could afford her anyway. And she didn't even know if this case was worth her time yet. "And if money is a concern, she doesn't have to worry about it. The rates quoted on my website are fairly steep, yes, but I'm willing to take the case on for a reduced fee. Pro bono, if necessary."

"You'd do that?" Ben asked, and, to his credit, there was a sudden edge of suspicion in his voice. "Why?"

Alex smiled. "Because, quite frankly, this job sometimes pays very well, and that more than makes up for the days when it doesn't. And money shouldn't be the final decider when it comes to whether or not you get your brother back. So why don't you go ahead and have a conversation with you sister about all this, and if she wants to work with me, the two of you can call me back later. If she isn't interested, feel free to call me back on your own and let me know."

"But if she says no... what happens to Tommy?"

"I'll do what I can to help, Ben. Don't worry. Talk to Haley, and get back to me, okay? I hope to hear from you soon. Bye."

Alex put the phone back in the cradle and slouched into the embrace of her office chair. She hated the phone calls from children; kids always seemed to know better than their parents when something supernatural was or was not involved in their lives' recent tragedies, and she hated having to tell them that she couldn't do much to help if the adults responsible for their safety didn't want anything to do with her.

This, though... this case was better than most in that respect. She wanted to stick to her adults-only policy, but that policy was, admittedly, only in place because children couldn't exactly give her proper permission to investigate. She couldn't enter someone's home or search their phone records or pursue any similar leads while doing the bidding of a minor, not solely because a minor couldn't legally be considered an actual client, but this case didn't necessarily suffer from any of those same concerns. Tommy Collins had not gone missing in his family's home; he had gone missing in the woods, far from civilization, and Alex didn't need anyone's permission to go poke around some forest.

If Ben Collins called back and announced that he couldn't convince his sister, Alex decided, she'd head out to this Blackwater Ridge place anyway and have a look around.

Swiveling in her chair, Alex turned to her computer and began poking at Google for what she could learn about Blackwater Ridge.

* * *

The Collins siblings—or at least the two who weren't currently lost somewhere in the wilderness—called back three hours later.

"Hello?"

"Yeah, hi." It was a young woman, sounding very anxious and wary. "Is this, uh, Alexandra Crowe?"

"The one and only. How can I help you today?"

"Oh, um. My name is Haley Collins. Apparently my brother Ben already called you about, uh..."

She trailed off. Clearly, Ben's efforts to convince her had been influential but far from perfect. "Yes, I spoke to Ben earlier. He told me that your other brother, Tommy, is missing up in Blackwater Ridge. Colorado, yes?"

"Uh, yeah. We're in Colorado. Um, what did Ben tell you, exactly?"

"He said that your brother went on a camping trip, that he normally keeps in pretty close contact with you guys, and that you haven't heard anything from him in two days. Now, this isn't exactly a typical case for me, but I've worked a few similar jobs before, and I'm willing to take this on if you're interested in my assistance, Haley."

"Yeah," Haley said, though she still sounded rather hesitant. "I definitely want all the help I can get, but, um... it's just that I don't think we can afford—"

"That won't be a problem, Miss Collins. At the end of the day, I'm in the business of helping people. While I can't afford to do this for every client's case, I shouldn't have any issues looking into Tommy's disappearance for whatever fee you feel you can afford. Or free of charge, is necessary."

There came a long pause that Alex recognized and appreciated. Too often, people jumped at the opportunity to get something for free, without a hint of skepticism or any consideration of the possible consequences. (The most narcissistic people, of course, _demanded_ it.) That Haley hesitated meant she was suspicious, and that meant she was smart.

 _Good_ , Alex thought. It was always better to work for a savvy client over an entitled one.

"I can't let you do this for free," Haley said finally. "We'll pay you for your time. What if—"

Alex smiled. "The current minimum wage in Colorado is $5.15. I would be happy to take that as an hourly rate, if you think that's fair."

Haley sounded almost painfully relieved. "Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. When would you start?"

"I should be able to catch a flight out to Colorado tonight, so I should be able to get working first thing tomorrow morning. I'll want to talk to you and your brother in person, gather up anything that night be a lead, and then figure out the right way to go at this. If we're lucky, he's just lost or stranded and needs some helping back to you guys. Worst case scenario... Well, I'm going to do everything in my power to find him and bring him back to you."

"Thank you," Haley said, her voice filled with such emotional gratitude that for a moment Alex just let it wash over her and soak in. This part was always nice, the part when they were so grateful for her help that it didn't occur to them that she might already be too late to bring them anything but bad news. "Thank you so much."

"I'm here to help, Haley. Try to get some sleep tonight, okay? We get to work in the morning."

"Alright, yeah. Thank you again! Bye."

"Bye."

Alex dropped the phone back into its cradle, and right on cue, Maggie peeked her head in the door. "You said yes to the dear boy, then?"

"Technically, I said yes to his sister. But, yeah, I need to be on a plane to Colorado as soon as possible. Preferably, the closest airport to this Lost Creek Wilderness Area, but I'll make do with whatever you can get me."

"Do you really think this is your kind of case?"

Alex shook her head. "No. But if they want my help, I don't see any reason to turn them down just because there's no monsters involved. My only reservation is how they're going to react if their brother is already dead by the time I find him."

"And if you can't find him?"

Alex shrugged. "I should be able to find some sign of what happened to him, if nothing else. If a bear or a bobcat got him—and both are very unlikely, unless he was already injured and alone—there'll be something left behind. Gear, clothes, something."

"Or a body."

"Hopefully a live one, but we'll see."

"Well, I'll go schedule your flight while you pack."

"Thanks, Mags. You're always a lifesaver."

"Oh, I know."

* * *

Alex woke the next morning in a Colorado hotel room with sunlight streaming in through the windows as cars honked at each other in the streets below. One quick phone call later, and she was punching the Collins' address into her TomTom with one hand and unwrapping a McGriddle with the other. Then she was on her way, pulling out of the McDonald's parking lot with a mouth full of breakfast that she washed down with a coke.

She was at the Collins' place by eight o'clock, and when she knocked on the front door, two bleary-eyed youngsters greeted her. Both brightened at the sight of her, invigorated by this visual confirmation that, yes, someone really was there to help.

"Haley and Ben Collins, I hope?" Alex asked, smiling. "I'm Alex Crowe."

The screen door flew open. "Come in!" They led Alex into their kitchen, shutting the door behind her, and gestured for Alex to sit. The boy, Ben, sat down in the chair beside hers. His sister lingered a moment, the faintest hint of surprise on her face, then sat down opposite them.

"So where do we start?" Haley asked.

It seemed that since the issue of money was taken care of, Miss Collins was now feeling much more take-charge than before.

"Well, unless your brother happens to show up here within a few hours, I'm definitely going to be heading out into the woods. Before I do that, though, I'm going to need as much information as you can give me. Who was he with, how long did he plan to stay there, where was his campsite, what trails are nearby, all that sort of stuff."

"Just a sec," Haley said, and then she was off into another room. Alex could hear her riffling through papers somewhere nearby; in the dining chair beside hers, Ben's leg bounced anxiously. When she met his eye, he tried to offer her a smile, but failed.

Haley came back with a small stack of maps that she slapped onto the table in front of Alex. "He's supposed to be there," she said, pointing to a patch of woods indistinguishable from any other. "Or near there, at least. He went out with his usual camping buddies. Gary something and Brad something. I don't know last names."

"Okay. It's probably too early for them to show up in any missing person's reports, so that's a dead end for now..."

"They weren't planning to be back until the 24th. The ranger I spoke to told me I couldn't even file a missing person's report yet."

"Right. Well, I'm gonna get a game plan together and try to hike out there..." She glanced outside. Morning sunlight glittered behind the thin decorative curtains covering the windows; there was still plenty of time to make it out today. "Sometime this afternoon, I think?"

"Well..." Haley said, exchanging a look with her brother. "We were actually thinking that tomorrow would be better."

"Tomorrow?" Alex repeated. That would mean wasting at least part of a day. "Why not as soon as possible?"

Ben gave his sister an unimpressed look. "Haley's hired some wilderness guy to take us out there."

Alex deflated a bit as this news sank in. Perhaps she was already wasting her time, then, if there was someone else on the case. Someone mundane, at that. "So you guys are planning to hike out and search for yourselves tomorrow?" Haley nodded, and Alex ran a hand through her hair. "Okay. Well, I guess that doesn't change anything for me this morning. I'm still going to get all the info together and see if I can't narrow down this search any more. Would you mind letting me take a look at those videos and photos your brother sent before he stopped communicating?"

"No problem," Haley said, and so Alex found herself combing through the contents of a laptop folder labeled 'Blackwater Ridge 2005', eyes searching for anything that might imply this was a bigger case than just a guy who'd wandered off a trail and maybe twisted an ankle or something.

* * *

Alex treated the family to lunch, very much uncomfortable with Haley's offer to cook, but when dinnertime rolled around, Haley made it very clear that she was cooking dinner for both herself, her brother, and Alex, and that Alex had better just accept it.

Haley didn't look like it at first, but she had quite the personality to her—equal parts motherly, self-confident, and unexpectedly domineering.

It was as Alex found herself awkwardly watching the slightly younger woman set the table that someone knocked at the door. Ben made no move to answer, and Haley's hands were full, so Alex called out, "I'll get it," and took it upon herself to tell whoever it was to get lost (an admittedly poor choice of words in retrospect, since Tommy Collins actually _was_ ).

Alex opened the door, peered through the screen at the two men standing on the front porch, and stopped dead.

"You must be—" said the man who was unmistakably Dean Winchester, and then he, too, broke off in disbelief as he recognized her.

"—kidding me," Alex finished for him. She heard footsteps behind her, and she tilted her head to watch Haley walk up to the door. "Please tell me these aren't the wilderness guides you hired," she said, and when Haley shook her head, Alex turned back to the boys with rapidly rising paranoia. "What the hell are you two doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Dean said. "You're investigating disappearances now?"

"You know these guys?" asked Haley.

Alex still didn't know what they were doing here, and so she didn't quite know how much to share. "Yeah," she said. "We've... worked a case together before." She glanced back at the brothers, hoping they'd go along with the lie that was about to come out of her mouth. "I had thought they were too busy with other cases to help out with yours, but I guess I was wrong."

"...oh," said Haley in a voice that quite implied she didn't believe a word.

Alex offered the other woman her most reassuring smile. "I'm sorry, I would've told you if I'd realized that their schedule had cleared after all. You go ahead with dinner; I'm gonna have a word with the boys here, okay?"

She opened up the screen door, leaving Haley standing uncertainly on the other side of it, and then marched toward the unmistakable Impala parked at the curb. Both Winchesters followed, and after a moment's vigil, Haley shut the front door and went back to her food.

"What the hell?" Alex repeated as soon as she was sure that both the Collinses were out of earshot. "This is just a missing person's case, what are you two doing here?" She turned to Sam, who hadn't so far said a word. "And weren't you supposed to be back at Stanford like a week ago?"

Sam's jaw tightened reflexively, and he looked away from her. Inexplicably furious, Dean positively barked, "Why don't you let us worry about that? What are _you_ doing here? You realize how suspicious this is, right?"

Alex's laugh was pure disbelief. "Me? That family called me here to help; you're the ones who just showed up on their doorstep! Seriously, why are you here? Last I saw of you two, you were in California looking for your dad."

"That's why we're here," Sam said. He sounded gruff, like he was biting back some more serious emotion. "Dad's journal had coordinates he wanted Dean to follow."

"Coordinates... to this house?"

"No," said Sam, "to Blackwater Ridge. And since there's apparently campers missing up there..." He shrugged toward his brother.

"We wanted to check it out! There's nothing wrong with that."

Alex sighed. Dean was angry and defensive; that, she couldn't do anything with. But Sam... Sam was looking sullen and _strange_ , and Alex felt an inexplicable pity prickling alongside her curiosity. Why _wasn't_ he in California?

"Are you okay, Sam?"

He froze, eyes widening very slightly, then rushed to put back on that male-bravado facade. "Yeah, I... just needed a break. There's more important things than law school."

Alex didn't bother pointing out that he'd just told her two very much contradictory excuses. If he'd just needed a break from law school, then he wouldn't be out here hunting; hunting was not a break. And if he was hunting because there were more important things to do with this life than become a lawyer, he wouldn't be trying to imply that law school was somehow such an overwhelming prospect that he'd needed a vacation.

In short, the Winchesters were lying to her, and she found that very ominous indeed.

For now, though, Alex decided to file this little mini-mystery away in her mental 'All Things John Winchester' folder, and she turned her attention back to the case at hand. "So are you boys actually interested in working this case, or what?"

"We should just head out and look for dad," Sam said, mostly to his brother, but Dean was staring, narrow-eyed, at Alex.

"You want us to work with you?"

Alex shrugged. "I'm not opposed to extra backup. If your dad _is_ out there in those woods, that could very well mean that I'm dealing a couple of kids who're about to hike their asses into Monsterville or worse, so, yeah, I might actually want your help before this thing is over. And if it is just another college boy who bit off more of the wilderness than he could chew, no harm done. We patch him up, get him home, and go our separate ways."

Sam nodded toward the house. "What are you going to tell them?"

"What I've already implied. That we're colleagues of a sort, and that they should be grateful for any extra help." She surveyed the two of them. "Are you gonna want me to pay you for this?"

Dean's brows lifted like he couldn't believe his ears; Sam's eyes narrowed. "Are they paying you?"

"Well, don't get all offended over it; it's just minimum wage. Haley seemed a bit insulted by the idea of letting me do this for free, so she's perfectly welcome to her pride. So, like I said, do you want me to pay you, or not?"

"You can afford to just... pay us? To hunt?"

Why Dean seemed to be having such a hard time wrapping him mind around the concept, Alex wasn't quite sure. Did he really somehow not realize just how much money there was to be made in the world of the supernatural, provided you didn't treat it like some god-given crusade with a mandatory vow of poverty? And if he didn't... how the hell had John Winchester managed to keep his kids so painfully naive?

"Yes, Dean, I can afford to pay you. Like I told Haley, this job can pay very well if you're smart about it. And lucky for you, I am. So what d'you think, boys? Speaking as independent contractors, what would you say your time is worth?"

"I don't—" Dean started, but Sam cut him off quickly.

"Ten an hour. Each."

The man might put himself forward as the more sensitive brother, but the look on his face in that moment was sheer challenge. Alex wasn't sure what to make of that, yet... but she certainly wasn't cowed. "Sure, so long as you realize I'm only getting paid five."

Dean looked between her and his brother uncertainly. Clearly, he was having a difficult time coming to terms with the idea of hunting for money. Alex hoped he wouldn't press the issue; truth be told, she didn't know how well her logic would stand up to scrutiny right now, even if _she_ were the one to apply it. She didn't have any good reason to say yes to this; it wasn't a good deal. Truth be told, there was a good chance that she'd only agreed because she hated the thought of backing down in the face of Sam's posturing.

Still... having backup tended to be more important in the wilderness than in actual civilization, and if she was going to be babysitting civilians on top of searching the forest, it was damn near a necessity.

Besides, she couldn't pretend that she wasn't curious to hear more about their little drama with crazy Daddy Winchester—not to mention getting the real story behind why Sam was still hunting a week after he planned to quit.

"Just take it, Dean," Sam said finally, and Dean glanced at his brother for a moment before jabbing his finger in Alex's direction.

"I still think this is unethical."

But of course he'd take the cash anyway. Alex wasn't surprised. "I'm sure it's quite a bit more ethical than however you've been paying your way until now, so you're welcome to whatever opinion you like. Now, shall we head in and tell the Collins the good news?"

The two men followed Alex back up to the house, where Haley was quick to throw open the front door and welcome them inside. Obviously, she'd been peeking through the curtains, watching their not-quite-altercation on the sidewalk outside. "Everything okay?" she asked.

Alex offered her a smile. "Everything's great. We'll have two extra pair of hands—and eyes—when we're out in the woods tomorrow. That'll be a lot of help."

Haley led them toward the dinner table, giving Sam and Dean a skeptical once-over as she walked. "So you guys are coming with us? You're... investigators, too?"

"Something like that," Sam said amiably, taking a seat at the table. Dean sat, quite a bit more awkwardly, at his side. "We've worked with Alex before, and we actually had some other business in town, so the more the merrier, right?"

As they ate, Alex and Haley—and a suddenly quite surly Ben—got the Winchesters up to speed on the case. As Sam and Dean met their story with the same skeptical questions that Alex herself had asked, she let Haley answer the brunt of them; truth be told, Alex still wasn't sure that there was a case here at all, let alone one that was truly worth her time... but the fact that the Winchesters were _also_ investigating Blackwater Ridge—and on their father's orders, at that—certainly made it worth checking out, even if Tommy Collins was just sitting in the woods with a dead cell phone.

"Can I see the pictures he sent you?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," said Haley. The laptop from earlier hadn't gone far, and within seconds, Haley had it wide open at Sam's spot on the table, once again displaying the unremarkable contents of 'Blackwater Ridge 2005'. "That's Tommy." She clicked through a few photos, then returned again to the final video that Tommy had sent her before going incommunicado.

They watched it through once. Alex hadn't noticed anything especially suspicious about it earlier, and she didn't notice anything now. But Sam's eyes narrowed as he watched it, and Alex watched him; something seemed to have piqued his interest about it, but Alex couldn't imagine what.

"Well," said Dean. "We'll find your brother. We can head out to Blackwater Ridge first thing tomorrow, provided no one's got any objections." He turned to Haley. "I know you want to go out there—you and your brother—but you might want to seriously reconsider that. I know how you feel, with your brother missing, but we don't know what we're gonna be walking into. It could be dangerous... and it might not be good news."

Haley glared at them, her posture a defensive stance of tense shoulders and arms crossed over her chest. "We're going," she said simply, and even Dean seemed to know that there wasn't any argument to be made.

Sam, meanwhile, was still staring hard at the laptop in front of him. "Would you mind forwarding these to me?" Sam asked.

"I already made copies of everything," Alex said. "I'll pass it all along to you. After dinner."

Sam stared at her for a moment, then looked at Haley. Her home-cooked meal was getting cold on the table in front of them. Sam snapped the laptop closed.

"Sure," said Sam. Dean dug into the plate he'd already made for himself, and Alex waited patiently for Sam to finish making his up before starting hers. "So, uh, Haley, what do you do?"

* * *

An hour later, Sam, Dean, and Alex were at a little table in a crowded bar called the Stag's Head, where Alex had let Sam copy her backup of 'Blackwater Ridge 2005' onto his own computer.

"So what did you see?"

Sam glanced over at Alex with a perfectly blank and innocent expression. _This guy must be one hell of a liar,_ Alex realized. If she hadn't seen that look on his face earlier, she would've completely believed this one. "What do you mean?"

"Smart suits you, Sam, you don't need to play dumb. You spotted something in that video earlier—or you thought you did. What was it?"

Sam glanced at his brother; Dean was waiting as expectantly as Alex. With a quick click, Sam opened up the video. "Watch this," he said.

Rather than play it from the beginning, he jumped to a spot in the middle—and then played it in frame-by-frame slow motion.

On the sheer wall of the tent behind Tommy, a shadow flitted past.

"That was milliseconds," Alex said, leaning in for a closer look. "Good catch. That shadow was too big to be a bird, and it's definitely _fast_. This might be a real case after all."

Dean made a face. "You hired us when you weren't even sure this was a case in the first place?"

"Are you complaining?"

Sam cut into their bickering. "Do you have anything else to go on, Alex? Area history, other disappearances, things like that?"

"Yeah. Here," she said, pulling up another folder on her own laptop. This one bore the label, 'Tommy Collins - Blackwater Ridge Disappearance'. In it, she had saved (among other things) several articles about previous disappearances. "Two hikers went missing in April, which isn't especially unusual for a national park. People go missing; it just happens. 1982 is where things get suspicious; eight different people went missing. Could have been a particularly nasty coincidence, could have be a serial killer that no one ever caught, or it could have been something _else_. No way to know for sure, based on the articles alone. Past that, there were some more disappearances here and there, one or two hikers going missing once a decade or so, with a couple exceptions. 1959 saw about a dozen people reported missing, and 1936 had a little over half of that."

Sam's brows lifted. "So 2005, 1982, 1959, and 1936?"

"Could be a cycle," said Dean.

"Oh, fuck," Alex said, catching Sam's eye as it sank in just what he was getting at. "That's definitely a cycle. I can't believe I didn't catch that."

At Dean's questioning brow, Sam explained, "It's every twenty-three years. That's the cycle."

"What about the disappearances in between?"

"They're probably not even related," Alex said. "Like I said, plenty of people actually do go missing, especially out in the wilderness. They wander off the trails, get lost or hurt, and die from exposure. But a sudden cluster of people going missing every twenty-three years? That's... that's a real case."

Dean slapped Sam on the arm. "I told you something was going on!"

Sam gave him a quick, brotherly glare before turning back to Alex. "What about witnesses? Anyone who was left alive at a camp when someone they were with disappeared?"

Alex tabbed through her pages. "Uh... Yeah. 1959. A kid survived what they assumed at the time to be a grizzly attack that killed the rest of his family. Apparently he nearly died, too." She glanced up at the two men, hesitant to voice her next words. "We _could_ go try to get an interview, but it's already pretty late, and this was definitely a pretty big trauma for the guy, so if we can avoid it..."

"If we're going out there in the morning," said Sam, "then we need to know as much as possible about what we might be walking into. Something that kills entire groups of people on a strict cycle that spans nearly a century is a lot more dangerous than a bear, that's for sure." He gave Alex a hard look. "You're really gonna let those kids go out there with us?"

"It's not like I can do anything to stop them. I don't even know how much they believe my—our—line of work is even a real thing, so warning them might not even work. But even if it did, Haley seems the type who'd go out anyway. The little brother, I agree that he should stay home, but... Well, he's not my kid and it's not my decision." Alex shrugged. "We can try to convince them in the morning. For now, if we want to talk to Mr., uh... Shaw, then we'd better get going."

* * *

Donnelly Shaw opened his front door to reveal three strangers, and he didn't look pleased to see a single one of them. Alex watched him glance at her and then discount her; Shaw looked to Sam when he spoke. "Can I help you kids?"

"I hope so," Alex said in her businesswoman voice. She hated having to use that one, but it wast a distressingly useful tool; things were always so much more difficult as a woman. "Are you the Donnelly Shaw that survived the bear attack of '59?"

The old man's brows knit together in confusion; whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this. "I am. Why?"

"We're with the park service," Sam said. Alex watched Shaw's shoulders relax very slightly, and she wondered whether it was because he didn't find the park service particularly threatening—or because he was relieved to now be speaking to someone whose authority he recognized. "And we'd like to ask you a few questions. May we come in?"

The old man gave a hefty shrug but stepped away from the doorway and gestured for the three of them to come in. "Look, ranger," the old man said as they all piled into his little home, "I don't know why you're asking me about this. It's public record. I was a kid. My parents got mauled by a—"

"Grizzly?" finished Sam. "That's what attacked them?"

The living room smelled heavily of cigarettes, the smoke set deep into the furniture, the carpet, the drapes; Shaw lit one up and took a drag, looking incredibly wary of answering that question. Rattled by it, Alex realized—after all these years, he was still scared.

"The reason we're here, Mr. Shaw," Alex said, gesturing toward the manila folder she carried in her arms, "is because we've noticed something a bit strange about the deaths that occurred back then, and we were wondering if you might be able to provide us any extra information."

Shaw stared at her hard, his gaze just shy of a glare. "Strange?" he repeated. "What are you talking about?"

"To be perfectly honest, Mr. Shaw, I suspect that you know what we're talking about." Alex opened up her folder and pulled out the first of her pages. She handed it to Shaw.

"What is this?"

"That is a timeline of deaths and disappearances in Blackwater Ridge. Your family died in 1959, along with well over a year's share of other disappearances. Twenty-three years before that, in 1936, about a half dozen people disappeared. Twenty-three years after '59, in 1982, eight people went missing. Now we're twenty-three years out from '82, and Blackwater Ridge has already seen three go missing so far." She held her hand out for him to shake; he stared at it disbelievingly. "My name is Alex Crowe, and I'm a private investigator looking into the disappearance of a local young man. If there is anything you can tell us that might help bring him home, it would be very much appreciated. And I promise you that whatever you have to tell us, we're going to believe you—even if you don't think we will."

Shaw looked at Sam, then at Dean. Then he held out his hand, grasped Alex's, and shook it firmly.

Then he turned away and collapsed into an old arm chair.

"Mr. Shaw," Sam pressed. "What did you see?"

Shaw had the unmistakable look of a trauma victim suddenly overwhelmed. Alex felt terrible for putting the man through this, but if it saved Tommy Collins's life, then it had to be worth it. "Nothing," Shaw said. "It moved too fast to see. It hid too well. I heard it, though. A roar... like no man or animal I ever heard."

"It came at night?" asked Sam. Shaw nodded, his eyes bright with emotion. "Got inside your tent?"

Shaw's face twisted. "It got inside our _cabin_. I was sleeping in front of the fireplace when it came. It didn't smash a window or break the door. It unlocked it." In her periphery, Alex watched Sam and Dean exchange a look, but she didn't dare glance away from Donnelly Shaw. He needed someone to look at him when he confessed this, Alex knew; he'd been holding onto this secret for a very long time. "Do you know of a bear that could do something like that? I didn't even wake up until I heard my parents screaming."

"It killed them?" Sam asked.

"Dragged them off into the night. Why it left me alive... I've been asking myself ever since." Shaw sagged in his chair, his confession over—or so Alex thought. When the man looked up again, his hands were at the collar of his sweater, pulling the fabric down to reveal his chest. "It did leave me this, though."

There was a horrible scar over the man's clavicle, spanning nearly the entire length of one broad shoulder. Five slashing claw marks had long since healed in that haphazard way the human body deals with traumatic wounds, each incision a raised bump whiter than the skin around it. They were long cuts, spaced further apart than any human could manage and in parallel lines that no bear claws could ever produce. Alex stared at it. She'd seen her fair share of wounds like it, but there was no way to tell for sure what manner of monster had given this to Shaw.

A werewolf could've made those marks, but that wouldn't fit with the twenty-three year pattern. What else?

Shaw took one look at their faces and nodded, satisfied. "There's something evil in those woods. It was some sort of a demon."

Shaw stretched out a hand toward Alex, offering her the timeline back. She took it with a small smile. "I think you're right, Mr. Shaw. There is something out there much more dangerous and capable than a bear. And we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that it never hurts another family the way it hurt yours." Fingers dipping into one of the inner pockets of her jacket, Alex pulled out one of her more specialized business cards. "Thank you for sharing your story with us; I can only imagine how difficult this must have been for you. If you are ever interested in talking to someone about what you went through—and what you lost—then I would be happy to put you into contact with someone who would be able to help."

She held the card out to him. Shaw took it with trembling hands.

"You mean like a supernatural shrink?" Dean blurted behind her. Shaw's shoulders tensed, and Alex forced herself not to do the same; but where Shaw was suspicious and defensive, Alex was merely annoyed.

She didn't so much as glance back at Dean; finally, she had all of Shaw's attention, and she wasn't about to let it slip away. "I mean," she said, "like other people who have experienced loss similar to yours. People who will believe you when you tell them what you just told us."

The old man shook his head. "Young lady, it's been over fifty years, and no one has ever believed me."

"We do," said Alex. "And if you call that number, I can help put you in contact with other people who will, too." She offered him another smile. "Thank you again, sir. You've been very helpful tonight. We won't take up any more of your time."

* * *

"What the hell was that?" Dean demanded as soon as they were back at their cars. "You're running a supernatural support group now?"

"Not just _now_ ," said Alex. "People who've seen beyond the masquerade have needed help coping since the days when there was a masquerade to see beyond. Just because hunters like to drink their trauma away—"

"How come we've never heard of anything like that, then?" interrupted Sam. "If you're telling the truth, then Dad would've known about it."

"No," said Alex, "he wouldn't have. Because there's not a chance in hell I ever would've invited John Winchester to participate. No offense, but from what I've heard of your father, he would've swooped in, radicalized anyone he thought he could, and then bailed. And that's not what I'm trying to do."

"What you're trying to do?" Sam repeated. "As in, you're not just working with this group but running it?"

"I founded it."

Dean's face lit with an odd kind of vicious triumph. "I thought you said it's been around as long as the masquerade or whatever the hell?"

Alex sighed and started toward her car. "Actually, I said we've needed it since then, Dean. Try to keep up." Her headlights flashed as she unlocked her door. "But if you're hinting you want an invitation, I'd be happy to offer one."

"You're not afraid we'd radicalize them?" asked Sam.

Alex grinned. "Just a bit." She slid into the driver's seat, shut the door, and rolled down her window. "I'll see you boys first thing in the morning. Get some rest—if we can't dissuade the Collins, this is going to be hunting and babysitting all rolled into one."

The last thing Alex heard before she pulled away was Dean's grumble of, "God, that'll be a nightmare."

* * *

Arguments were not Alex's favorite thing to have first thing in the morning.

Breakfast, that she liked. Coffee, sure. A shower, definitely. Morning sex? Yes, please. But an argument? Let's not.

"I'm going!" Ben Collins snarled.

The four of them—Alex, Haley, Ben, and Roy, the wilderness guide that Haley had hired—stood at one of the Lost Creek Wilderness Area's many trail heads. Roy, an older man who clearly didn't have nearly as much at stake in this fight as Ben did, was loading his guns, obviously preparing for the absolute worst he could imagine. Alex considered telling him that the worst he could imagine didn't even hold a candle to what they might really be facing, but somehow she didn't think he would be willing to take her word on that.

"Honestly, Ben," Alex gently supplied, "Roy has a point. I know you can handle yourself, but this might turn out to be a lot rougher than you realize. It's not too late to head home if you'd rather; hell, you could make a day of it. Drive into Denver, maybe hit the water park, hang out with some friends, go on a date. Pretty much anything would be more fun than this."

"I don't want to have fun," Ben protested, looking for all the world like she'd suddenly started speaking Urdu. "I want to find Tommy."

"So do we, kid," Roy said. "And that might be harder to do if we've gotta—"

Roy stopped short at the telltale sound of an old muscle car creeping over the gravel road toward the trail head. It was the Winchester Impala, its tires kicking up rocks left and right, and it slowed to a dramatic stop behind Roy's truck.

"They actually showed," Haley said, sounding surprised as Sam and Dean emerged.

"Everybody ready?" Dean called.

Roy turned to Haley. "Who're these guys?"

"They're with me," said Alex, and Roy gave her a glance that couldn't have been less impressed. "Glad you didn't miss us, boys." She turned to Roy. "I think the rest of us are good to go. You?"

Roy grumbled something under his breath that Alex couldn't make out. "Yeah." He strapped on his gear and picked up his gun. "I'm good."

Sam and Dean had already pushed past them and were heading off down the trail. Alex glanced over at their retreating backs and slung her own pack over her shoulders. "Then let's go."

* * *

The Lost Creek Wilderness Area was a gorgeous forest, all earthy greens and browns and the hum of bugs and birdsong. The sixth of them hiked deeper into the woods, turning quickly off the short main trails that families and other casual hikers would stick to. They were headed up to Blackwater Ridge, the much more dangerous area where Tommy had last been seen camping, and it would take them the better part of today to make it to the general area of his campsite.

Mostly, they walked in silence. Dean, though... Dean decided to amuse himself with antagonizing the Collins' other hire.

"Roy," said Dean, apropos of nothing at all, "you said you did a little hunting?"

Vaguely, Alex tried to remember this. Had Roy said so? Or was Dean just pretending that had happened so he could seize the opportunity to be a dick? (Because, Alex was sure, that was _definitely_ Dean's "I'm about to be a dick" tone.)

Roy, who was marching through the underbrush with a hunting rifle in his hands, did not sound amused when he answered. "Yeah, more than a little."

Dean hummed in faux-speculation. "What kind of furry critters do you hunt?"

Roy's eyes were on the wilderness; he was barely paying any attention to Dean. "Mostly buck. Sometimes bear."

"Tell me," Dean said, and Alex braced herself for whatever smartass macho bullshit he was about to spew, "do Bambi or Yogi ever hunt you back?"

Roy seized Dean by the back of his jacket, and Alex had a moment of panic before she spotted why: there was an open steel foothold trap right where Dean had been about to walk. With Dean obliviously squaring up for a fight, Alex stepped carefully forward and jabbed at it with a stick. It sprang closed with a sharp snap, and Roy gave her a more appraising look as he let go of Dean.

"You should watch where you're stepping out here," Roy said, looking back to Dean with a smug little smile. "It's dangerous."

Alex stifled her snicker at the sight of Dean's expression; he'd picked a fight, and he'd been out-machoed. Served him right.

They started off again, Sam bringing up the rear. Alex's glance in his direction proved even more hilarious than Dean's failure; Sam had his duffel bag slung carelessly over his shoulder (and he was certainly asking for one hell of a back ache later), his head swiveling in all directions as he took in the view. He looked like an overgrown kid on a field trip, not an experienced hunter on a trail; _what_ had John Winchester been teaching these boys?

Haley, for her part, had similar concerns. "Did you guys even pack any provisions in that duffel bag of yours? Are you taking this seriously at all?" 

"Sister," Dean said, "you have no idea how seriously we're taking this."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means we're in the same boat," he answered. His confession caught Alex off guard. "Sam and me, we're looking for our father. He might be out here, too. We don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I mean we don't know. He gave us reason to think he might be out here, and if looking for him means we can help look for your brother, too, then that's what we're gonna do. Besides, this time we're getting paid—and that's a lot more rare in our line of work than you might believe."

"What?"

"Never mind. Anyway, what do you mean I didn't pack provisions?" Dean held up a half-eaten bag of M&M's with a cheeky little grin; he made a stark contrast to Wilderness Roy over there with his loaded gun and serious attitude.

Alex laughed, and they all hiked on.

* * *

They made it up to Blackwater Ridge by late afternoon. Sam and Dean walked off as soon as Roy announced their arrival, stopping a bit apart from the rest of the group; with a wary glance toward Haley, Ben, and Roy, Alex went to join the brothers.

"You hear that?" asked Dean.

"Yeah," said Sam, at the same time as Alex answered, "No."

"It's dead silence here," Sam told her. "Not even crickets."

He was right, and it wasn't a good sign. Prey species were only this quiet when they sensed a predator in their midst; the monster of Blackwater Ridge, whatever it was, could very well be close.

"I'm gonna go take a look around," Roy said.

"You shouldn't go off by yourself," said Sam, but the warning drew nothing but an amused grin and a chuckle from the older man.

"That's sweet," Roy said, though it was less sarcastic than Alex would've expected. "Don't worry about me." Rifle in hand, Roy pushed past them and started forward; Alex and the others trailed along behind.

"Everybody stays together," said Dean, and for once, he and Alex were of one mind. They very well might already be in the monster's sights; any stragglers would no doubt be the first to go, should the creature decide to take them.

It didn't take long for Roy to get away from them. But the Collins followed Sam and Dean, and Alex walked warily behind them. She had her pistol strapped in her shoulder holster, hidden beneath her jacket; there was an unloaded shotgun and an iron crowbar tied to her bag, wherein she'd packed spare bullets, shells packed with salt, a small handful of silver bullets, a couple vials of dead man's blood, an unloaded spare pistol, and a few extra knives. On her hip hung her go-to blade with its six inches of wrought iron and her more rarely-used five-inch silver knife. In short, she was prepared for almost anything she could reasonably expect to run into on this continent. But that didn't make her feel any better about the possibility of either Haley or Ben getting picked off, so she stuck to the rear and stayed on high alert.

Off in the distance came a shout. "Haley! Over here!" Haley took off at the sound of Roy's voice, leaving Alex, Ben, and the Winchesters to race after her.

They didn't have to go far before they saw it. Tommy Collins' camp was torn to shreds. There were bloodstains on the tents, the canvas of which had been torn mostly to ribbons. "Looks like a grizzly," Roy said, and Alex had to agree. If Sam hadn't spotted that flicker of a shadow on Tommy's video, she would've assumed that it _was_ a bear that had made this mess.

Haley slipped off her pack and started yelling for her brother, running to each of the tents for a quick check inside. But if Donnelly Shaw's story was true, they wouldn't find the corpses here.

After a few seconds, Sam shushed Haley to silence. "Something might still be out there," he warned her and was met with a skeptical look.

Dean, in the meantime, started wandering off. Alex followed his line of sight, and sure enough, there were the telltale signs of dragging: broken and displaced plants and an obvious trail in the detritus of the woods, where the twigs and decaying leaves might as well have been parted like the Red Sea. Dean called for Sam to come and look, and the two of them knelt down over the evidence as Alex looked on.

"Look," said Dean. "The bodies were dragged away from the campsite, but here, the tracks just vanish. It's weird."

"So whatever it was must have picked up the bodies," said Alex. "It wouldn't have been a demon; you don't tend to find them hanging out in the woods, and one wouldn't have needed to drag anyone away from their camp before just taking them. Maybe..." She looked upward, craning back her head as her eyes followed the trunk of a tower tree. "Maybe it picked them up?"

"What, like into the trees?" asked Dean. "You think Tarzan's been taking campers?"

"Probably not, but I won't make any promises," Alex said absently, still staring upward. She wasn't really paying attention to Dean; she filed through her memories, trying to narrow down anything that might have a connection to trees. Maybe some kind of pagan deity? That _could_ explain the cycle, though she couldn't recall twenty-three being a significant number in any mythologies. Or maybe some kind of nature spirit; plenty of cultures had animistic beliefs about trees and forests. But she'd never actually run into anything like that before, and that meant she wouldn't know how to fight it on short notice. And creatures that the Abrahamic mythologies overlooked tended to be the kind of things that required much more specific executions. Those was the kind of hunts that needed special wood and animal blood and a whole lot of crap that she wouldn't be able to get her hands on in a hurry.

She _really_ hoped it wouldn't be anything unusual.

"Well," said Dean, "it's no skinwalker or black dog, so that rules my theories out." He turned and made his way back to the ransacked camp beside his brother; Alex followed a moment later.

They found Haley with her brother's broken, bloodstained phone in her hands and tears in her eyes. Alex looked around, checking for any more signs of just what might have done this as Dean knelt down beside Haley and offered what little emotional support he was equipped to give.

Alex wandered toward Ben. "How're you holding up?"

He shrugged, but his face was stone-cold despair. For the first time in hours, he'd taken his earbuds out. "Tommy's dead, isn't he?"

"We don't know that. Not yet."

"There's blood. Everywhere."

It was such a simple statement, and Alex could sometimes forget how much it meant to other people. Most Americans weren't used to seeing much blood anymore; the twenty-first century was a sterile era compared to what had come before, and civilians were more and more detached from the brutal reality of life and death with every passing generation.

That was a good thing, except in moments like this.

"And no way to tell whose it is," Alex reminded him. "He went camping with friends. Obviously, something attacked them. There's no one here, so we don't have any way to tell who got hurt or where they are now. You're gonna want to keep it in mind that this _could_ be as bad as it looks, yes, but you don't want to give up your hope yet. If Tommy's still out there, he's probably in sore need of a rescue by now, so that means the six of us have to keep ourselves together. So how're you really holding up, Ben?"

He looked away from her, tears shining in his dark eyes. "I think I was still, you know, holding onto the idea that maybe he'd just... I don't know, forgot to keep up with us. That we'd get out here and find him having fun with his friends, and he'd just give us some lame apology and we'd all think less of him for a while and then everything would be fine." His voice cracked. "I didn't really want to admit that I might never see my brother again."

Alex slung an arm around his shoulders, giving him a quick little squeeze of a side-hug. "If there's anything we can do for him, I promise we're gonna do it. We're not just gonna let your brother disappear."

He nodded—a single, terse gesture that spoke to barely-restrained emotion.

And that was when the screaming started.

"HELP!" roared a distant voice. "PLEASE! SOMEBODY HELP ME!"

Ben shrugged off his backpack seemingly without a thought, sprinting off in the direction of the voice without its weight to hinder him. He must have recognized the sound of it, for him to move like that. That must have been his brother.

Roy, Sam, and Dean ran with their guns out. Haley and Ben followed after them men; Alex, the only one still laden with her gear, trailed behind with her own gun drawn.

The shouting stopped when they were in a little clearing. Once again, silence fell with eerie immediacy over the woods, and Alex could hear her own heart pounding in her ears above Haley's inquiring voice. "It seemed like it was coming from around here, didn't it?"

No one spoke for a moment, six pairs of ears listening for the slightest hint of a sound. None came. "Everybody back to camp," Sam ordered, and not a single one of them failed to obey.

By the time they made it back to the tents, Alex understood what had happened; it had been a trap. Something had lured them away from the campsite the very moment that most of them had shrugged off their gear. The campsite had been thoroughly ransacked in their absence, though they'd only been gone for two minutes at the absolute most. Every bag that they'd carried into the woods was gone now, save the one still slung over Alex's shoulders. Any provisions that the others had brought, any survival gear of Roy's, any spare weapons of Sam and Dean's—the creature, whatever it was, had taken it all.

But Alex was pretty sure now what they were up against.

The others spoke, their voices all varying degrees of frightened, anxious, and worried, as Alex's eyes scanned the trees around them. How close were they to its lair, she wondered? Could it have already taken their gear and returned to watch them, or did they have a few minutes of safety at hand?

"Some nut job out there just stole all our gear," said Roy.

"And how do you suppose they did that, Roy?" Alex asked as Sam moved toward his brother with fidgety, furtive body language. Had he realized what she had? She rather suspected he had. "We weren't gone long enough for anyone to sneak, grab five full packs, and run away without us seeing them."

"Maybe they're hiding," Roy said, and this possibility seemed to please him; he raised his rifle and started walked toward the nearest trees.

"You don't want to do that," Alex said. "This is where your expertise ends, I'm afraid, and mine begins."

Roy's head swiveled, his face sheer disbelief. Further off, Sam and Dean paused in their attempt to sneak away unnoticed; Sam was giving her a hard look that she didn't know if she liked. "And what'd you say your expertise was, again?"

"I didn't," said Alex. She turned to the Collins. "The voice we heard—did that sound like your brother?"

"That was definitely him," said Haley. "I'm positive."

Alex sighed. "Haley, I need you to keep an open mind for what I'm about to tell you, alright? Remember why you hired me, and please believe that I'm going to do everything in my power to get your brother home safe. But first thing's first: that was not your brother screaming just now. That was the thing that took him?"

Haley's eyes went wide. The Winchesters exchanged a look and came a little close. "What are you talking about? The _thing_? What _thing_?"

Alex glanced at Roy; he looked disgusted with this entire exchange, but at least he hadn't decided to storm off half-cocked. Not yet, at least. "My expertise is not typical investigation; it's in the _paranormal_ , and that's what we're dealing with here. Now, before you say anything, I need you to think about this: there is no human or animal known to science that could've taken all of our gear so quickly. This is not some nut job, and this is not a bear or mountain lion. We're dealing with a Wendigo."

Before Alex could decide whether or not Haley's stormy expression meant she believed this or not, Dean cut in. "But Wendigos are in the Minnesota woods or Northern Michigan. I've never even heard of one this far west."

"She's right, Dean," Sam said. "Think about it. The claws, the way it can mimic a human voice."

Alex nodded. She _knew_ he'd figured out it, too. "And the speed. That's the biggest clue. Wendigos are fast as fuck, swift as the wind. That's how this thing had time to steal our shit; it made us think that Tommy was nearby, and it lured us away for just long enough to swoop in and disable us in the easiest way it knew how. It took our food and water; it took our maps and Roy's GPS. It wants us lost and defenseless."

"What are you talkin' about?" Roy demanded. Alex stiffened; she didn't like to hear that tone of voice coming out anyone who was holding a gun in their hands. She was intimately familiar with what it felt like to be shot. "What the fuck is a wendigo?"

"It's a creature from Native American folklore," said Sam. "They're monsters that eat people. They used to be normal men and women, but not anymore. The story's always the same: someone isolated in the wilderness deals with starvation by turning cannibal."

"Like the Donner party?" asked Ben.

Alex smiled at him. "Yeah, like that. No one's entirely sure why some people turn and others, like the people from the Donner party, get through it without losing their humanity. It could be time, or repetition, or even something genetic that we just don't know about yet. But in the case of the wendigo, their _questionable_ survival tactics transform them from desperate people to something else."

"Cultures all over the world believe that eating human flesh gives a person certain abilities," Sam added. "Speed, strength, even immortality."

"If you eat enough of it," said Dean, finally getting in on the act himself, now that he saw they had a rapt and horrified audience, "over years, you become this less-than-human thing. And you're always hungry."

Roy threw his head back and laughed, though it wasn't funny; Alex recognized a forced reaction when she saw one. Roy was roaring with mirth like that only because he wanted this to be a laughing matter, not because he truly believed it was. "You kids really expect me to believe that shit?" he said, grinning broadly. He turned to Haley. "Where the hell did you find these freaks?"

"Does this mean it _ate_ Tommy?" Ben asked.

"No," Alex said, shaking her head. "It means your brother might still be alive. Wendigos take victims back to their lairs and keep them prisoner for at least a little while before they kill them. We might still have time to rescue your brother and his friends."

"So how do we get him back?"

" _You_ aren't doing anything," said Sam firmly. "We're getting you out of these woods while you're still alive. This is too dangerous for civilians."

Alex shook her head. "We don't have time for that. If any of Tommy's group is still alive, they might not be for much longer. Besides, we're not going to be able to get out of here before nightfall, and if that thing thinks it's in danger of losing its next few meals, it's going to try to snatch us. What we need to do is set up camp and fortify ourselves for the night." She turned to the Collins siblings, ignoring Roy for the moment. "Wendigos have two known weaknesses, but there's only one thing that can kill them. Does anyone have any silver, lighters, or matches on them?"

"I have matches," Haley supplied. "No silver. Why?"

"Silver will slow them down, but fire is the only thing that will kill them. Lighters and matches aren't gonna do much of anything to hurt it, but they might scare it off in a pinch." Alex glanced at Roy. "You wouldn't happen to still have a flare gun on you, would you?"

"It was in my bag," he said.

"Ours, too," said Dean.

"And I'm the idiot who didn't think to pack one," Alex said with a sigh. "I've got silver to go around, though." She slipped her pack off her shoulders, ripped down the zipper, and started rifling through the various contents until she found her little folding knife case. And... _Well, there's an idea!_ "You boys wouldn't happen to have a lighter, would you?"

Dean plucked one out of his pocket.

"Perfect," she said, and she tossed her can of Off! to him. "It's not gonna be enough to kill it, but it'll hold it off if it tries to strike. As for everybody else—" She unfolded the leather case and slipped out two little switchblades. She handed one to Haley and the other to Ben. "Anything comes near you, you stick 'em with the pointy end. Got it?" They each nodded, and Alex turned to Roy. "That gun isn't gonna do much good—" He scoffed, shaking his head. "—unless you're willing to go with me on this." She folded her knife case back up and slipped it back into her bag; her fingers snagged against another little case, and she pulled it out, double-checked that it was the right one, and tossed it to Roy.

"What's this?"

"Those are the bullet you're gonna need for the handgun I'm about to give you," she said. " _Silver_ bullets. What you're packing now won't even slow this thing down, but those will."

"And if I don't believe you?"

"Well, Roy, let me put it this way: you can shoot a nut job with _any_ metal, and they'll be bleeding either way. So if I'm wrong, you're good. But if I'm right, only the silver will do. So why take a chance?"

Roy scoffed and shook his head, but Alex noted that he didn't give her ammo back. She fished for her pistol, passed it off to Roy, and turned back to Sam and Dean. "So, boys, do you keep your knives on your lovely persons or in that bag you lost?"

Dean pulled a face—whether over her choice of words or over the confession he was about to give, she didn't know. "The bag." She nodded, and she dug into her pack a little deeper.

Out came her silver dagger, and she stared at both Winchesters for a moment before deciding to toss it to Sam. "Don't lose it." He nodded tersely, as quick and to-the-point as a soldier who'd just been given an order. A lasting effect of his father's tutelage, no doubt; Alex had heard rumors about how John operated.

Alex heaved her bag back onto her shoulders—she definitely wasn't about to set it down now, not after what had happened to everyone else's—and surveyed the rest of them. "So, we're all tricked out for the moment. But we can't kill the fucker without fire. So what're we gonna do?"

"We have to go get our flare guns," Sam said simply.

Haley looked back and forth between Sam, Dean, and Alex. "But that means..."

"Finding the lair." Alex shrugged. "We would have to anyway, if we want to get your brother back." She glanced at the Winchesters; neither of them seemed prepared to suggest an alternate idea. "We can hash out the details in the morning, but I think it's a good idea if Roy stays here with you guys while the three of us go to get Tommy. That should make the wendigo come after us, but if it does bother you, you'll have two guns and enough silver to make the fucker hurt before he burns. It won't be safe, exactly, but you'll be in the least danger we can manage."

"I still don't believe a word of this."

Alex gave Roy a less-than-friendly grin. "And I don't need you to. As long as you keep Haley and Ben safe, you're welcome to believe whatever you want." She looked around at the torn tents. This was going to be a rough night. "Let's settle in."

* * *

They built a fire before night fell, and they were lucky that the weather stayed good. They didn't have any shelter, and they only managed to find in the ransacked tents a single sleeping bag that wasn't covered in blood. They unfolded it and ordered the Collinses to try to get some sleep while Dean walked around the camp with a little book that he kept double-checking as he traced lines into the dirt with a long, thin stick.

Anasazi symbols of protection, he told her. She didn't recognize them; she was woefully under-informed when it came to most Native American tradition.

Through all of this, Roy remained his skeptical, rather combative self, but he mostly held his tongue. The camp paired off. The Collinses laid down on their sleeping bag and whispered to each other instead of actually dozing off; Sam and Dean looked like they were having some kind of heart-to-heart off at the far end of the circle; and both Roy and Alex remained on high alert, each pointing a silver-loaded gun into the treeline in preparation of wendigos, nut jobs, or anything else.

When Tommy Collins' voice once again pierced the now-darkened forest, both sets of siblings were suddenly back on their feet, staring out in the shadows with nearly blind eyes. The light of their campfire was like a little bubble, emphasizing how far they could go while still remaining with the ring of symbols that Dean had sworn would help protect them. But the light made the darkness seem even more impenetrable; being so close to the fire meant their eyes hadn't had the chance to properly adjust, and so none of them could see into the trees. If something was out there, it wouldn't have to be very far away in order for it to be completely invisible.

The wendigo could be anywhere, and Tommy's voice begged them to come help.

"It's not really him," Alex reminded everyone. She knew from experience that it could be hard to keep that in mind when it was a loved one's voice being used as a lure; there was always that nagging question of _what if_? What if that really was Tommy out there? What if they really were listening to their brother die?

Alex pointed her shotgun in the direction of the voice. The bushes and the trees around their circle rustled, and something growled very close by.

"Okay, that's no grizzly," said Roy.

The creature kept moving; leaves rustled and twigs snapped in every direction, but there was a pattern to it. The creature was circling them, and it was being loud on purpose; it wanted to frighten them before it struck.

Clearly, it didn't realize they were equipped to fight back.

Roy fired into the treeline, then twice again in quick succession. "I hit it!" he yelled as the creature roared, and when it took off, so did he.

"Roy, no!" Dean yelled. Alex was already off running after him, and she heard Dean warn the Collinses not to leave the circle before he and his brother raced after her.

Every step of the way, Alex was convinced she wasn't going to be fast enough. The silver bullet would've slowed the wendigo down, but how long until it recovered? What would happen if Roy actually cornered it? She dreaded the thought.

And then there was Roy, standing still only a few paces in front of her. He had apparently lost it and was looking around for it and—

"Roy, get down _NOW!_ " Alex screamed, and she fired at the twisted, humanoid shape that had just descended from the trees with its elongated arms stretched toward Roy's neck.

The wendigo screamed and fell as the silver shrapnel hit him, and Roy scrambled away from it as it hit the ground. The wendigo moved slower now, snarling at Roy with its terrible teeth before shooting a more wary look at Alex's shotgun as she closed in on it. And then, in the blink of an eye, the wendigo leaped back up into the tree and disappeared as completely as if it had never been there at all.

" _What the fuck was that?_ " Roy shrieked, near-hysterical. Sam and Dean crashed through the underbrush behind Alex as she heaved Roy to his feet. Experienced wilderness guide he might be, but Roy was shaking so hard that Alex took his gun right out of his hands and handed it off to Dean. With her silver dagger still in his hand, Sam helped her get Roy back to camp while Dean covered them with the pistol.

Once they were back in Dean's little protection circle, Sam and Alex put the still-trembling Roy down onto the sleeping bag. "What the fuck _was_ that?" he asked again, staring back the way they came. His eyes were wide and panicked, and his face had gone utterly pale.

"We told you," said Dean. "That's a wendigo."

"Still don't believe a word?" Alex asked humorlessly. When Roy didn't even glare, she sighed. "Alright, Roy. I need you to get some sleep. You still have a job here, and I'm gonna need you to do it in the morning, okay? By the time the sun comes up, I need to be able to put that gun back in your hands and know you're not gonna be shaking so hard that you accidentally shoot one of us. And if you're very, _very_ lucky, you'll never see that thing again in your life. So take a nap and get your nerves under control. We'll wake you up when it's time."

He passed out not long after, and Haley and Ben settled down on the other side of the fire. They slept in the dirt, but at least they slept.

Alex didn't catch a wink.

* * *

The wendigo left them alone for the rest of the night. Sam and Dean slept in shifts, both unsuccessfully encouraging Alex to take a nap herself. But her body was used to her hectic schedule, and the lack of sleep wouldn't hinder her after only a single all-nighter. She'd crash once this was over, but for now, she'd be fine.

In the morning, the gentle rays of dawning sunlight illuminated the forest. But birdsong and the familiar hum of insects still didn't return to Blackwater Ridge.

They woke Roy, gave him a few minutes to clear the sleep and the trauma from his mind, and then gave him back the pistol she'd given him the night before. Alex's shotgun got handed off to Haley.

"None of you are going to take a single step outside of those protection symbols, do you hear me?" Alex asked them. Ben nodded eagerly, as did Haley; Roy winced, still not _quite_ willing to believe that this was really happening, and then nodded, too. "You step out of 'em, and that thing can get you. If we don't come back by sundown, you spend another night here, conserve your ammo, and then get the fuck out of the woods in the morning."

"What about you?"

"If we're not back by then, we're already dead. No point getting yourselves killed, too." Alex turned to Sam and Dean. "Are we ready?"

"You sure you want to leave that here?" Dean asked, nodding toward the shotgun. "We could really use it out there."

"We're not going out there empty-handed, don't worry." She glanced at Roy. "I gave you eight bullets last night; you used three. I just gave you back four of them; the other's in here." She lifted up her arm to reveal the other pistol she carried. She looked back at Sam and Dean. "And we're only gonna take the shot if we have no other choice. We do _not_ want to waste it, not until we can get to those flare guns."

"Then let's go," said Sam. He pointed toward the nearest tree; about nine feet up, there were gouges in the wood in the exact same pattern as the long-healed gouges in Shaw's chest. "Trail goes that way."

They followed in tense silence.

* * *

"Am the only one who gets the feeling that these claw prints are a little _too_ easy to follow?" Sam asked abruptly.

Alex glanced back at him. "You got a better idea?"

"I just think we should be aware we might be walking into a trap."

"Trap or no trap," Alex said, "we're walking into it's lair. It's the equivalent of moseying into a cave where you know a grizzly hibernates; you'd better expect a bear."

"Except the bear rarely wants to eat you," said Dean. "Scare you away, maul you a bit, maybe even kill you dead... but not hunt and eat you."

Alex gave him a little grin. "Clearly, you've never been up against a polar bear. 'If it's white, say goodnight' isn't an old adage for no reason. And apparently global warming's got those fuckers breeding with grizzlies now, too, so that's fun."

Dean glanced at Sam, visibly bewildered, and then back at Alex. "What are you talking about?"

She laughed. "Doesn't matter. Trail goes that way. And stay alert—there's a good chance we're being followed."

* * *

The claw marks did soon get harder to follow. If the wendigo had been planning an ambush, it never came. Their trek slowed down considerably the further away from camp they got; it was hard to tell old scratches from new ones without getting up close, and most of the marks were so high in the trees that it was impossible. But they found their way eventually to the entrance of an old, abandoned mine. It was a broken hovel of a place, built with mossy wooden planks slowly rotting away to time, and the sign on the door read, "Warning! Danger! Do Not Enter. Extremely Toxic Material." Above that one, there was also, "Keep Out, No Admittance."

"Not good signs," Alex said, grinning faintly at her own stupid pun. Neither of the Winchesters even seemed to notice it.

Sam opened up the door and had to duck on way in. "Watch your step," he warned them, and Dean too ducked beneath the doorframe with Alex bringing up the rear.

They walked down a long tunnel, Sam and Dean pulling flashlights out of—well, Alex could only guess out of either their jackets or their asses—and lighting the way just enough to get by. Alex's eyes adjusted quickly, and she managed not to trip on the cart rails that lined the floor like a miniature, underground train track. She hadn't been in a mine in a _very_ long time.

Occasional shafts of light marked minor cave-ins, places where the sun above them peeked in through the rocks and illuminated the subterranean world. Alex caught a glimpse of something swiftly moving through one of these patches just before a growl began to echo through the tunnel; all three of them hid and watched the gangly figure of the beast stalk off into the distance.

Did it know they were there? Was this a trap, like Sam had wondered? Or was this really going to be as simple as finding the flare guns, grabbing Tommy, and blasting this cannibal fuck to kingdom come?

They walked on into the darkness, carefully dodging rotted wood boards from who knew what decade; their sloping decline continued until finally they found themselves directly below where they had been a few minutes earlier.

Tommy Collins hung from the rotting ceiling by his wrists—bloodied, beaten, and either unconscious or dead. Alex, Sam, and Dean approached as quietly as possible; if he _was_ still alive, they didn't want to scare him.

"Tommy?" whispered Alex as she neared the unlucky man. "Can you hear me?" He made no movements, no signs of life whatsoever, and Alex reached out two fingers to press them against the pulse point of his neck.

Before she could even check for his heartbeat, Tommy's eyes flew open, and he reared back in utter horror; Sam's hand clamped down over his mouth before he had a chance to scream, and Alex pulled back. "Don't scream," Sam whispered. "Your brother and sister sent us. We're here to rescue you."

Tommy nodded weakly as Dean reached up to saw through his binds. Sam and Alex supported him, lest he crash to the ground; he'd been hanging like that for days now, and there was a good chance it had done long-term damage to his shoulders, arms, and wrists. In the short term, he might very well be seriously injured, and they didn't have much time to check him over before the wendigo came back.

"Can you walk?" Dean asked. Tommy nodded, though he was clearly more determined to do so than actually sure of his capabilities; he pushed himself away from them and staggered on his own two feet. After a moment, Alex let him sling an arm around her shoulder and lean his weight on her.

"Check it out!" said Dean. A pile of various dirty, bloody backpacks, camping gear, and rusted weapons were stashed in the corner. "It dumped our shit over there."

"Get the flare guns," Alex said needlessly; both Winchesters were already hastening to do so, and it didn't take them long to find their flare gun and Roy's.

Dean looked back at Alex and Tommy. "Everybody ready to move?"

Tommy nodded. "As much as we'll ever be," said Alex. With one arm supporting Tommy and the other clutching her handgun, Alex felt burdened and uncomfortable. On one hand, she was grateful to have backup here; killing the wendigo and keeping Tommy alive would have quite likely proved too a big task for one person. But actually trusting her backup... Alex hadn't been very good at that part of the gig for a _long_ time now.

The growls followed them through the tunnels. They walked steadily up the incline with flare guns drawn—Dean in front with Sam covering Alex and Tommy from behind. Alex felt terribly exposed; try as she might to believe that these hunters weren't going to let her down, she couldn't quite seem to reassure herself. The sooner Tommy could support himself, the safer she'd feel.

"Sound like someone's home for supper," said Dean.

"Got a plan?" asked Alex.

Dean was silent for a moment; then his gaze met his brother's. "You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"

"Yeah, I think so," said Sam. 

And before Alex could even ask what this plan of theirs was, Dean had already jogged off into the darkness. "It's chow time, you freakin' bastard!"

Alex glanced at Sam. "So is he the bait, or are we?"

"We'll see how it works out. C'mon."

They could still hear Dean yelling in the distance as they went on toward the upper floor. But if Dean was meant to be the distraction, he wasn't a very good one; the growls followed Alex, Sam, and Tommy, and they were getting louder, more aggressive, more _hungry_ all the while.

"If we get to the entrance, you get him back to camp."

Alex scoffed. "You kidding? You want the two of us to hobble all the way back to camp with a single silver bullet as protection? I don't think so."

"Fine," Sam said, jaw set in frustration. "Then I need you to—" He fell silent. Alex didn't need to ask why; she too could feel the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. They both turned back toward the tunnel behind them—

—and Sam fired the flare gun as the wendigo roared, but it was too fast. It flitted effortlessly out of the way, and the bright flash of the flare whited out Alex's vision for a few seconds. She felt Sam's hand in the center of her back, pushing her to run, and she did so blindly, hampered by the weight of Tommy Collins and the realization that she could at any moment trip on the cart rails beneath her feet.

Worse yet, Sam had missed his single shot with the flare gun. Dean was the only one with a shot left that could take it out.

And worst of all, Alex's eyes finally readjusted to the darkness just in time to realize where Sam had accidentally led them: straight into a dead end.

What had she said about trusting back-up?

"Get behind me," Sam ordered, and before Alex had even a split second to protest, he was already shoving her behind him and pulling the pistol from her hands.

Nothing in the world felt worse than having someone take her gun away from her in the last few moments before a monster closed in on her, but what was she gonna do now, fight him for it? They had precious seconds left.

"One shot," she reminded him. "Don't miss."

Sam set his jaw as he turned back toward the wendigo, and in the dim light of the tunnel, the three of them watched the monster approach. Sam did not yet raise the gun.

The wendigo had stopped running; now, it stalked toward them slowly, walking _almost_ like a normal human, except that it still looked like it had just stepped off the set of _The Descent_. Alex hoped this wouldn't end so badly for them as it had for Sarah and her friends.

Tommy Collins trembled like a leaf in a hurricane; Alex did her best to hold him upright, even took his other hand in hers and squeezed to reassure him, but there was nothing she could really do. In a single, rapid movement, Sam brought her gun up and aimed it at the wendigo; it stopped moving, its head tilting as it took in the sight of the gun.

Did it realize they had silver left? Or was it just hesitating over the potential pain of being non-fatally shot?

"HEY!"

Dean's voice shattered the tension, and the wendigo whipped around to get a split-second glance at him before the second flare gun lit the tunnel like a flash bang. The flare struck it in the chest, the grey, mottled skin practically turning to charcoal at the contact, and the flames spread like wildfire across the wendigo's flesh as it screamed.

They watched it burn away to nothing, the sickening smell of burnt flesh filling the tunnel along with surprisingly little smoke, and then Alex sagged in relief. Her hand loosened against Tommy's, and she heard him sigh like he'd just been pardoned from death row.

"Well, that was eventful," Alex murmured. She slipped her hand from Tommy's and nudged Sam's shoulder. "Trade?"

It took a moment to get his attention—he was still staring at the pile of smoldering flesh between him and his brother—but when his attention blinked back to the present, he quickly took over supporting Tommy and gave her back her handgun.

Alex considered unloading it, but she decided to wait. They didn't think there was more than one wendigo here, but she didn't plan to take the chance.

* * *

When they finally made it back to camp, hugs and cheers and thanks were had all around. The Collins siblings could not have been happier to be reunited; only now that they had their brother back did Alex realize that both Haley and Ben had clearly been preparing themselves to never see him alive again. But all three of them were nothing but smiles and jokes as they made the long walk back to civilization, and Alex drank her fill of it. _This_ was the payoff of her job, the part when things actually worked out and someone's life was saved. The thanks and the money and even the fight itself were all wonderful perks, but knowing that she was the reason this family had been put back together... that second-hand happiness, that pride in a job well done might very well be what she enjoyed the most.

Sam and Dean, for their parts, were quiet on the way back. Roy grumbled a bit about his lost gear, but he knew better than to complain too much; he'd only just escaped with his life, after all.

Once they finally made it back to the trail head, they used the satellite phone in Roy's jeep to call for an ambulance for Tommy. No one else was especially hurt, just a few scrapes and bruises, but Tommy was starved and dehydrated and potentially more injured than they realized. They brought him back to the ranger station to wait for the paramedics.

While Haley gave a wide-eyed Ranger Wilkinson one hell of an "I told you so," Roy left with a terse goodbye.

"Three guesses how he's gonna deal with this," Alex said, watching him drive off down the moonlit road.

"You never know," said Dean. "Ol' Roy could make one hell of a hunter someday. A _real_ one, I mean." Alex shook her head. Hunters were like vampires in a way, she thought; they always seemed to want to make more of themselves. 

Sam and Dean were already by the door of the ranger station, obviously as eager as Roy to get the hell out of dodge before anything resembling law enforcement showed up. "I guess you boys are ready to roll, huh?"

"Dad wasn't out there," Sam said. "There's no point in sticking around."

Nodding, Alex reached into her jacket and fished out her wallet. "So... I'd say that job was about thirty-six hours or so?" Dean gave her a blank look, but Sam's expression was calculating as he watched her. She counted out her cash. "Thirty-six hours at ten each is seven-twenty." $720, coincidentally, was _far_ more than she herself had earned from this case. Not that she was complaining. It wasn't like she couldn't afford it.

She held the cash out to Dean, mostly because the look on his face at the sight of it was more amusing than his brother's. "You're seriously... serious?"

"What, did you think I was lying before? You worked the job, I promised to pay, and so there it is. Take it."

Dean stared at her hand for so long that Sam sighed heavily and snatched the money up himself. "Thank you," he said.

"No problem. I needed the backup, and I'm glad you could provide. You still have my card?" Sam nodded; Dean did, too. "You guys ever need anything, feel free to give me a call. No promises, but whatever you need... I'll see what I can do."

The Winchesters headed for the door. On the other side of the room, Ben and Haley waved their goodbyes, but their attention remained mostly on their brother. Tommy still looked terrible, slouching in a chair and breathing heavily. Even from so far away, Alex could see that his eyes were a bit glazed-over now; since the immediate danger of the wendigo had passed, he'd gotten quite a bit spacier and less focused. Hopefully the paramedics would be able to fix him up without much lasting damage.

The glass door of the ranger station swung open.

"Oh, guys?" Alex called, just before they stepped outside. Both brothers glanced back. "I hope you find your dad."

"Thanks," said Dean. Sam nodded his agreement, and then they were gone.

Within less than a minute, Alex could hear the engine of Impala rev to life, and then that unmistakable black car rolled out of the parking lot. Alex stared after it for a moment, watching the taillights disappear into the distance.

It still struck her as rather suspicious that this case had brought her path across the Winchesters' for the second time in two weeks.

As the sirens sounded in the distance, Alex wondered how long it would be before she saw those two again.

**Author's Note:**

> For the foreseeable future, I will not be sticking to any regular release schedule; chapters will be published sporadically. [_To Dwell on Dreams_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16753141) is my priority right now.


End file.
